Short Biography

Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress. She became a household name at the age of 20 as Sister Bertrille in the 1960s sitcom The Flying Nun. She has won two Oscars: one for Norma Rae in 1979, and another for Places in the Heart in 1984. More recently, Field stars as Nora Holden Walker on the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, currently airing its third season, as the Walker family matriarch. Sally Field was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Maggie, an actress, and Richard Dryden Field, who worked in sales. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother subsequently remarried to actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney. She attended Portola Middle School, then Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California where she was a cheerleader. Field got her start on television as the boy-struck surfer girl in the mid-1960s surf culture sitcom series, Gidget. She went on to star in her best-known television role as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun. In an interview included on the DVD release of The Flying Nun, she said that she would have preferred to continue playing Gidget. While starring on The Flying Nun, Sally tried her hand at singing, releasing an album on Colgems Records in 1967. The same year, she cracked the Billboard Hot 100 with one single, Felicidad.

Field enjoyed a large amount of critical and commercial success in movies, particularly in the 1980s. In 1977, she co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed in that year`s #2 grossing film, Smokey and the Bandit. In 1979, she played a union organizer in Norma Rae, a successful film that established her status as a dramatic actress. Vincent Canby, in his review of the film for the New York Times, praised Sally, saying, "Norma Rae is a seriously concerned contemporary drama, illuminated by some very good performances and one, Miss Field`s, that is spectacular." She won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1981, Field played a prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set comedy Back Roads, which received middling reviews and grossed $11 million at the box office. Field has also ventured into the realm of directing. Her first directorial stint was for the television film, The Christmas Tree (1996). She also directed the feature film Beautiful (2000), as well as an episode of the TV mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon (1998).

Field married Steven Craig in 1968. The couple had two sons, Peter Craig, a novelist, and Eli, an actor and director. They divorced in 1975. In 1976, Field began a live-in relationship with Major Daniel M. Yoder, USAF. Their relationship ended in 1978. Field was romantically involved with Burt Reynolds for many years, during that time they co-starred in several movies, including Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II, and The End. In 1984, she married film producer Alan Greisman. They had one son, Sam. Field and Greisman divorced in 1993. On October 29, 1988, she and her family survived a crash after their charter plane lost power on takeoff.

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