The two-time Oscar-winning star Sally Field has enjoyed a successful Hollywood career that has spanned over half a century. In a new interview, Field is speaking out to reveal the one type of role that she always turns down to this day.
Field Refuses To Play One Kind Of Woman
Field, 79, loves playing a wide variety of women on screen. There’s one kind of woman, however, that she has no interest in portraying.
“I never take to stories about women that are trying to find a man,” Field told People Magazine.
“I didn’t like it then, and it doesn’t appeal to me now, because I think women are about so much more,” she added. “Life is so much more complicated than that.”
In this same interview, Field said that early in her career, she channeled a specific kind of emotion into roles that she felt were significant to both popular culture and to herself as a person.
“Being a little girl raised in the ’50s and having a very complicated childhood with my stepfather and even my mother at times, I was filled with rage. Really filled with rage,” she explained. “And it was working with [acting coach] Lee Strasburg that allowed me to begin to tap into it, to not let it devour me.”
Field tapped into this anger when she was filming her 1979 movie Norma Rae. For this film, she won the first of her two Best Actress Oscars.
“I asked [director] Marty Ritt, ‘How angry can I be here?’ He said, ‘How angry are you?’ And I said, ‘Angry,'” Field recalled. “And so that was the first time I was ever really able to learn how to tap into my own rage on film.”
Field’s Passion For Acting
While appearing on the TODAY show last week, Field said that she has always wanted to be an actor. Indeed, acting is in her blood, as her mother Margaret Field was also an actor. On top of that, her stepfather Jock Mahoney was a successful Hollywood stuntman.
“This is what I do. I’m an actor. And I’m proud to be an actor,” Field said. “As I get older, and I’m months away from being 80, (finding) the roles about 80-year-old women is my dream. That’s it.”
Recalling the first time she took the stage as a small child, Field remembered, “I left my body. I was doing something but I didn’t tell myself to do it.”
“I heard my voice for the first time,” she stated of acting. “And I could be mean, I could be all sorts of things I wasn’t allowed to be.”
When asked if acting has always been a natural fit for her, Field replied, “I guess so… I would’ve been a nurse or … I don’t know what I would’ve been.”
Field Refuses To Slow Down
After decades of working as an actress, Field has two Oscars, two Emmys and a Tony nomination to her name. Though she will be turning 80 this year, Field has no intention of slowing down. Instead, she’s still looking to the future.
“[Acting] is what I do,” Field recently told People Magazine. “I’m supposed to go into rehearsals for a play at the end of summer. I still have my head down, and I’m always hoping to get better.”
Field is a true living legend, and there will never be another one like her. When it comes to the roles she chooses, we can certainly see why she wants to avoid certain types of women who are only out to pursue men.
God bless you, Sally Field!