Sally Field

Sally Margaret Field is an American actress born on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California. Known for her performances on screen and stage, she has earned two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards, alongside nominations for two British Academy Film Awards and a Tony Award. Her major career honors include a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the National Medal of Arts, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

Field was raised by her mother, actress Margaret Field, and her father, Richard Dryden Field, a pharmacist who served in the Army during World War II. Following her parents' divorce in 1950, her mother married actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney in 1952. Field attended Portola Middle School and Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California, where she was a cheerleader. Her brother, Richard Dryden Field Jr., became a physicist and academic.

Field began her acting career on television, starring in the ABC sitcom Gidget from 1965 to 1966, followed by the ABC series The Flying Nun from 1967 to 1970. Seeking to expand beyond her early television image, she studied at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. In 1976, she delivered a breakout dramatic performance in the title role of the television movie Sybil, earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Special Program.

Her film stardom grew following her role in Smokey and the Bandit in 1977. Field gained widespread critical acclaim and won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying a union organizer in Norma Rae in 1979. She earned her second Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for playing a farm widow during the Great Depression in Places in the Heart in 1984. Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, she also appeared in films such as Absence of Malice, Murphy's Romance, and Steel Magnolias.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Field starred in notable feature films, voicing Sassy in Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and appearing in Mrs. Doubtfire, Forrest Gump, Soapdish, Not Without My Daughter, and Eye for an Eye. She also launched a directing career, helming the television movie The Christmas Tree, an episode of From the Earth to the Moon, and the feature film Beautiful. On television, she won Primetime Emmy Awards for her guest role on ER and her lead role as Nora Walker on Brothers & Sisters.

In later years, Field portrayed Mary Todd Lincoln in the 2012 historical drama Lincoln, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and appeared as Aunt May in The Amazing Spider-Man films. On stage, she starred in the Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie, receiving a Tony Award nomination. Her later projects include the miniseries Maniac, the series Dispatches from Elsewhere, the comedy film 80 for Brady, and the movie Remarkably Bright Creatures.

Field has been married twice, first to Steven Craig, with whom she has two sons, and later to Alan Greisman, with whom she has one son. She published her memoir, In Pieces, in 2018. Outside of her entertainment career, Field has engaged in advocacy for women's rights, LGBT rights, and health awareness.