Sally Field

Sally Field is an American actress born on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California. Her mother, Margaret Field, was an actress, and her father, Richard Dryden Field, was a pharmacist who served in the Army during World War II. Field's ancestry includes English, Irish, and Sicilian Italian heritage. Her parents divorced in 1950, and her mother subsequently married actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney. In her 2018 memoir, Field disclosed that Mahoney abused her throughout her childhood until she was fourteen. She attended Portola Middle School and Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, where she was a cheerleader. Her 1964 graduating class included financier Michael Milken and talent agent Michael Ovitz, while actress Cindy Williams was one year behind her.

Field began her professional career on television, first appearing as an extra in the 1962 film Moon Pilot before taking on the starring role in the ABC sitcom Gidget, which ran from 1965 to 1966. Although the show was cancelled after one season, summer reruns drew strong ratings. ABC then cast her as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun, which aired for three seasons from 1967 to 1970. During that period, Field also pursued a brief recording career, releasing an album titled Star of The Flying Nun in 1967 along with several singles. She subsequently starred opposite John Davidson in The Girl with Something Extra, which ran from 1973 to 1974. Following that series, she studied at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg, who became a mentor and helped her move beyond the typecasting she had experienced in television comedies.

Her dramatic breakthrough came with the 1976 NBC television film Sybil, in which she portrayed a young woman with dissociative identity disorder. The role earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. The following year, she co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Reed in Smokey and the Bandit, the second-highest-grossing film of 1977. In 1979, she played the title role in Norma Rae, a performance that won her both the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won a second Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Edna Spalding in the 1984 drama Places in the Heart, along with a second Golden Globe Award for that performance. She also received Golden Globe nominations for Absence of Malice in 1981 and Kiss Me Goodbye in 1982.

Additional notable film credits include Stay Hungry, Heroes, The End, Hooper, Smokey and the Bandit II, Back Roads, Murphy's Romance, Steel Magnolias, Soapdish, Mrs. Doubtfire, Forrest Gump, Hello My Name Is Doris, and 80 for Brady. She received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination for her portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln in 2012, and appeared as Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 and its 2014 sequel.

Field returned to television in the 2000s with a recurring role on the NBC medical drama ER, earning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series in 2001. She then starred as Nora Walker in the ABC drama series Brothers and Sisters, which ran from 2006 to 2011, a role for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She also appeared in the Netflix limited series Maniac in 2018.

Her Broadway career spans 2002 to 2017. Field made her professional stage debut on Broadway in 2002 when she replaced Mercedes Ruehl in the original production of Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? After a fifteen-year absence from the stage, she returned to Broadway in the 2017 revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, a performance that earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. She subsequently made her West End debut in a 2019 revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons.

Among the honors Field has received across her career are two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards. She was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2014, received the National Medal of Arts in 2014, was honored with the Kennedy Center Honor in 2019, and received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2023.