Sally Field has delivered so many timeless performances that she makes it look easy, but she assured ET it's a lot harder than it looks.
Sally Field has delivered so many timeless performances that she makes it seem easy, but she assured ET it's a lot harder than it looks.
"To have a long-term career, you have to buckle up and you have to be willing to head downstream on a roller coaster shooting to the ground as well as one that's shooting to the sky," Field told ET. "You have to be able to ride it."
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If anybody knows how to carve out a lasting career in Hollywood, it's Field. Her life in showbiz launched in 1965 with the TV series, Gidget, and a decade later she starred in the mini-series Sybil to high acclaim. In 1977, she starred opposite Burt Reynolds in the cinematic classic, Smokey and the Bandit, and then in 1979 she turned in an Academy Award-winning performance as the star of Norma Rae.
ET spoke with Field about her first Oscar win in a 1981 interview, where she seemed anything but complacent.
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"You kind of have that feeling of 'I'm going to come back with number two and then number three. I'm going to win eight in a row!'" Field said at the time. "You want to break every record that ever was."
Field, 69, went on to win her second Best Actress statuette in 1985 for her lead role in Places in the Heart.
Her latest movie is already stirring up Oscar buzz. In Hello, My Name Is Doris, out now, Field plays an eccentric older woman infatuated with a younger man played by Max Greenfield.
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"He's very different from me," Field says as Doris in a clip from the movie. "It just seems impossible."
Watch the video to revisit some of Field's most memorable roles.