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Sally Field

Actress, producer, director. Born Sally Mahoney on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, the daughter of actress Margaret Field (stage name: Maggie Mahoney) and Richard Field, and the stepdaughter of stuntman and actor Jock Mahoney. She has one brother, Richard Field, and three half-sisters, Princess Mahoney, Shirley Field, and Elizabeth Jane Field.

Field is well known for her dramatic career growth, from a teenaged actress who performed in lightweight TV sitcoms to a mature Academy Award-winning performer, as well as a director and producer.

Her first role was in Gidget (1965-66), the TV series based on the 1959 film of the same name, about a boy-struck southern California surfer girl. Soon to follow was her role of Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun (1967-70), a popular sitcom about a novice nun whose habit permitted her to fly. Her first feature film was The Way West (1967), starring Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark.

After The Flying Nun, Field decided that more serious acting should be in her future, so she spent three years studying at the Actor's Studio. She returned to the small screen to co-star in Alias Smith and Jones (1971-73) and The Girl with Something Extra (1973-74). In 1977, she won an Emmy Award for her breakthrough performance as Sybil, a young woman with multiple personalities, demonstrating her competency as a dramatic actress. In 1979, she won a Best Actress Academy Award and a Cannes Best Actress Prize for her leading role as the labor union organizer Norma Rae. After winning another Academy Award for Places in the Heart (1984), she made an exuberant and memorable acceptance speech which ended with the line, "I can't deny the fact that you like me! You really like me!"

In 1989, Field played a Southern housewife and mother at the center of the ensemble tearjerker Steel Magnolias, co-starring Julia Roberts, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Dolly Parton, and Olympia Dukakis. Highlights of the 1990s included Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), in which Field starred with a cross-dressing Robin Williams, and her performance as the mother of Tom Hanks' slow-witted hero in the acclaimed Forrest Gump (1994). She also starred in Soapdish (1991), with Whoopi Goldberg and Kevin Kline, Not Without My Daughter (1991), and the thriller Eye for An Eye (1996), with Kiefer Sutherland.

Field has her own production company, Fogwood Films, and has produced several films, including Dying Young (1991), A Woman of Independent Means (TV miniseries, 1995), and The Christmas Tree (TV, 1996). She has also directed for television, including The Christmas Tree (1996) and an episode of From the Earth to the Moon (1998). In 2000, Field starred in Where the Heart Is, with Natalie Portman, Ashley Judd, Joan Cusack, and Stockard Channing. She also directed her first feature film, Beautiful (2000).

Field was romantically linked with Burt Reynolds in the 1970s and 1980s. The two enjoyed a very visible, long-term relationship after she co-starred with him in 1977's Smokey and the Bandit. Often rumored to marry, they never did. Field was married to screenwriter Steven Craig from 1968 to 1975 and had two sons, Peter and Eli. Her marriage to producer Alan Greisman lasted from 1984 to 1993 and produced one son, Samuel.

A strong supporter of women's issues, Field traveled to China in the late 1990s to represent Save the Children at the Fourth World Conference on Women.