—From “Sally Field: Coming Up Clover” by Fred Robbins, from the January 1981 issue of The Saturday Evening Post
Few know better than Sally Field the satisfaction that comes from battling your way out of a tight corner. Six years ago, she realized she had become a nonperson in Hollywood, if not an actual laughing-stock. She had to face the fact that, unless she wanted to continue playing bubble-headed teenagers on TV — roles she was still being offered — she had no future in Hollywood. “I had a rotten image,” Sally recalls. “Nobody ever thought of me for a movie. They figured no adult would spend money to watch someone like me — freckled, round-faced, and 5′ 2″ — on the big screen.
“Being an object of ridicule was hurtful. But bitterness eats you up, destroys all the good parts of you. Besides, it wasn’t ‘them’ nor me. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just happened. So I have learned to turn anger and hostility into something positive.”
With no one to lean on but herself, she concluded that it was time to withdraw and effect a total transformation, and threw herself into a regimen of dramatic training such as most actresses experience at the beginning of their careers.
Daring to gamble on herself, she won.
The first proof of this came with 1976’s Sybil. Field held the nation spellbound while she gave a dazzling performance as a mentally disturbed woman afflicted with 16 separate personalities.
Winning an Emmy for Sybil confirmed the wisdom of her decision to make a fresh start in her career. And soon after, there was Norma Rae. This blockbuster movie, about a Southern mill worker spearheading a violent union battle, made Field the first actress to win, in one year, not only the Academy Award but also the Best Actress awards given by the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Golden Globe organization, and the Cannes Film Festival.
“Elements of these characters become forever a part of me,” she says. “I work so personally, from the inside out, that it changes me. I don’t come back the same. And Norma definitely did that to me. I would like to be more like her.
“Now I have the opportunity to choose the sort of work I want to do, to work with the kind of people I want to work with, to present myself as I see myself to the press, to the movie industry, to the world. Next time you talk to me, I may be a whole other person.”
This article is featured in the March/April 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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Comments
Playing a schizophrenic is extremely difficult but Field did a great job. She reminds me of James McAvoy. He played a mental patient in the movie Split a few years ago. He has 24 personalities.
Great vintage Post article to read now. I have to agree with Peter’s choice here as well. She and Robin Williams had great chemistry in it together from the very start. As the situation later became more outrageous, they played it with straight faces in a realistic way that really contributed to our enjoyment of this film that much more.
I liked Sally Field in “Mrs Doubtfire” playing next to the late and much admired Robin Williams two of the best actors ….ever
Revisiting Sally Field’s 1967 Post cover story is such a treat—her reflections on transitioning from ‘Gidget’ to serious roles reveal the quiet resilience behind that megawatt smile. The line about ‘wanting to be taken seriously without losing joy’ feels eerily relevant today, when women still battle to be seen as both talented and likable.
Field’s career arc—from flying harnesses in The Flying Nun to Oscar-worthy grit in Norma Rae—proves she’s always been ahead of her time.
Question for film buffs: Which of her performances moved you most? (I’ll never recover from Steel Magnolias.) And to younger readers: Does her ‘type-cast rebellion’ resonate with Zennier struggles for creative reinvention?