Sally Field

Info

Full Name: Sally Field
Date of birth: November 6, 1946 (79 years old)
Location: Pasadena (California)
Country: USA

Sally Field has been active for 47 years, participating in 23 movies that average a 6.9/10 score.

Videos eCartelera

Tráiler en VOSE de 'Harry Potter' T1

Biography

Sally Margaret Field was born on 6 November 1946 in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Margaret Field, a contract actress at Paramount, and a pharmacist who drifted out of her life after her parents divorced. Nothing about her beginnings announced one of the great American acting careers: for years she was the perky teenager of network sitcoms, dismissed by critics and patronised by producers. Six decades later her shelf holds two Oscars, three Emmys, two Golden Globes and the Best Actress prize from Cannes, and she is still landing lead roles as she approaches 80.

Behind the sunny image lay a painful childhood. Her stepfather, the actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney, ruled the household after marrying her mother, and decades later Field revealed that he abused her until she was fourteen. Acting, she has said many times, became both her refuge and her way out.

From surf girl to flying nun

At eighteen she won the lead in 'Gidget' (1965), a sitcom about a boy crazy surfer that lasted a single season, though summer reruns turned it into a belated hit and made her enormously popular. 'The Flying Nun' (1967 to 1970) followed, with Field as a young nun whose winged cornette allowed her to take flight. The show was a success and a curse in equal measure: Hollywood filed her away as a cute television face with no dramatic range.

Determined to prove otherwise, she trained at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg while seeing out her contract on another sitcom, 'The Girl with Something Extra'. The gamble paid off with 'Sybil' (1976), a television film in which she played a young woman with sixteen personalities opposite Joanne Woodward. That raw performance won her a first Emmy and changed her reputation overnight. The same year she made her adult film debut in 'Stay Hungry' alongside Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Burt Reynolds, Norma Rae and two Oscars in five years

In 1977 she starred with Burt Reynolds in 'Smokey and the Bandit', a freewheeling car chase comedy that became the second biggest hit of the year in America, behind only 'Star Wars'. Made on a modest budget, it took well over a hundred million dollars and turned her into a bankable star. The shoot also sparked the most talked about romance of her life: she and Reynolds were a couple into the early eighties and made three more films together, among them 'Hooper' (1978).

Then came 'Norma Rae' (1979), Martin Ritt's drama about a Southern textile worker who risks everything to unionise her factory. The role brought her the Best Actress award at Cannes, a Golden Globe and her first Oscar. She held her own against Paul Newman in Sydney Pollack's 'Absence of Malice' (1981), then won a second Academy Award for Robert Benton's Depression era drama 'Places in the Heart' (1984), accepting it with the much parodied "you like me!" speech. A gentler note followed with 'Murphy's Romance' (1985) opposite James Garner.

Screen mother to a generation

From the late eighties she embraced the mother roles Hollywood began sending her way. In 'Steel Magnolias' (1989) she anchored the ensemble alongside Shirley MacLaine, Dolly Parton and a very young Julia Roberts as her daughter. In 'Not Without My Daughter' (1991) she played Betty Mahmoody, the American who fled Iran with her child, and in 'Soapdish' (1991) she gleefully sent up the world of soap opera divas.

Two films from those years made her part of the furniture in millions of homes. In Chris Columbus's 'Mrs. Doubtfire' (1993) she was the wife who divorces Robin Williams, driving him to dress up as a Scottish nanny, and in Robert Zemeckis's 'Forrest Gump' (1994) she was unforgettable as the devoted mother of Tom Hanks, an actor only ten years her junior. Not long before, the two had shared the bill as comedians in 'Punchline' (1988).

That decade she also voiced Sassy the cat in 'Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey' (1993) and tried her hand behind the camera, directing the television film 'The Christmas Tree', an episode of 'From the Earth to the Moon' and the feature 'Beautiful' (2000).

Three Emmys, Aunt May and Mrs. Lincoln

Television, which had once typecast her, ended up at her feet. A guest turn as the bipolar mother of nurse Abby Lockhart in 'ER' earned her a second Emmy in 2001, and her Nora Walker, matriarch of 'Brothers & Sisters', brought a third in 2007 and kept her on screen for five seasons. In cinemas she turned up in 'Legally Blonde 2' (2003) and the quiet indie drama 'Two Weeks' (2006).

Her return to the front rank came twice over in 2012. She was Aunt May to Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker in 'The Amazing Spider-Man' and 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2', sharing scenes with Emma Stone, and she fought fiercely to play Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln'. Spielberg initially doubted she was right for it, so she won him over with a screen test opposite Daniel Day-Lewis and gained more than twenty pounds for the part. The effort earned her a third Oscar nomination.

Far from slowing down, she then delivered some of the most praised work of her later years: the sixtysomething office worker smitten with a younger colleague in Michael Showalter's 'Hello, My Name Is Doris' (2015), the overbearing celebrity therapist of Netflix's 'Maniac' (2018) with Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, and Jessie Buss, mother of the Lakers owner, in 'Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty'. She also appeared in 'Dispatches from Elsewhere', reunited with Showalter for 'Spoiler Alert' (2022) opposite Jim Parsons, and hit the road with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno in '80 for Brady' (2023).

The Old Vic, an arrest and an octopus

British audiences saw her up close in 2019, when she starred opposite Bill Pullman in Arthur Miller's 'All My Sons' at the Old Vic, a production broadcast to cinemas worldwide by National Theatre Live. Two years earlier she had earned a Tony nomination for 'The Glass Menagerie' on Broadway. Offstage she has never hidden her politics: in December 2019 she was arrested alongside Jane Fonda at a climate protest in Washington.

Her memoir 'In Pieces', written in secret over several years and published in September 2018, became a bestseller thanks to its unflinching account of her childhood and of her years with Reynolds, who died just days before the book reached shops. The honours have kept piling up since: the National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center Honors in 2019 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2023.

Her three sons have followed her into the business in their own ways. The eldest, Peter Craig, from her marriage to Steven Craig, became the screenwriter behind 'The Batman' and 'Top Gun: Maverick'; his brother Eli directs; and Sam, her son with producer Alan Greisman, has also worked in film. She, meanwhile, keeps finding new audiences.

In May 2026 Netflix released 'Remarkably Bright Creatures', Olivia Newman's adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt's bestselling novel, with Field as Tova, a widowed cleaner at an aquarium who strikes up a friendship with a giant Pacific octopus. The film pairs her with Lewis Pullman, who happens to be the son of her Old Vic stage partner. Sixty years after 'Gidget', she is still the one carrying the picture, and she turns 80 in November 2026. Who would dare call her just a likeable girl from the telly now?