Saturdays with the Stars: Sally Field

Each month of 2024 we are taking a look at an actress who bore the title "America's Sweetheart" during the peak of her film fame, and what she did with the title (including when it was passed on to the next Hollywood princess).  Last month, we talked about Mary Tyler Moore, an actress who had an impressive side career in film while dominating the television landscape for more than two decades.  This month, we're going to talk about an actress who, like Moore, got her start in television.  Unlike Moore, though, this didn't lead to critical acclaim but instead personal derision and mockery in the industry.  It wasn't until a 1976 miniseries that she was able to reestablish herself not as a "girl next door," but a serious actress, and soon, a two-time Oscar winner.  This month's star is Sally Field.

Field was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of actress Margaret Field (best known for her work in the camp Sci-Fi classic The Man from Planet X).  She was a cheerleader at her Van Nuys high school, and soon after was cast as the titular role in the ABC sitcom Gidget.  While this was not a success, her next series was.  The Flying Nun was a big hit, but it was a problem for Field's young career, as the ridiculous premise of the show (a nun whose hat allowed her to fly) meant that she wasn't treated seriously in casting calls, and throughout the early 1970's Field struggled to find meaningful work.  That all changed in 1976, when she starred opposite Joanne Woodward (whom Field has publicly stated went to bat for her to help her get cast) in Sybil, a miniseries about dissociative identity disorder which won her an Emmy.  

For the next couple of decades Field would go from a the "girl next door" style of America's Sweetheart to an actress more in the mold of Audrey Hepburn, one whose work was frequently light, but taken seriously.  She would win two Academy Awards, star with (and romance offscreen) one of the biggest names of the era, Burt Reynolds, and eventually return to television in an Emmy-winning part in ABC's Brothers and Sisters.  Field's career is unusual because it never entirely shook the "sunshine & rainbows" aspects of Gidget & The Flying Nun, but this month we're going to take a look at her long career, and examine the ways the actress tried to step out of her initial typecasting, and became one of the most lauded screen stars of her generation.