Key Points
Sally Field revealed that Burt Reynolds pushed her to pass on Norma Rae.
She would win Best Actress at the Academy Awards for the 1979 film.
Reynolds refused to accompany her to the ceremony.
If it were up to Burt Reynolds, Sally Field wouldn’t have won her first Oscar.
The Smokey and the Bandit costars made four movies together and dated from 1976 to 1980, and it was during that time when Field received the script for 1979’s Norma Mae, based on the true story of a factory worker who became active in the union due to poor working conditions. But Reynolds’ reaction to the project was the “beginning” of Field “pulling away” from the ’70s icon.
“He didn’t want me to do Norma Rae, called her a ‘whore,’ and it was because she had some sexual past,” Field told PEOPLE. “He threw the script at me. He wanted to control me, and because I was standing up [to him], he said, ‘Boy, you’re letting this get the better of you.’ And I said, ‘This is the better of me.'”
Field then went and met with director Marty Ritt and accepted the role of Norma Rae Wilson. “It was the beginning of me finding my legs,” Field said.
Sally Field in ‘Norma Rae’
Credit: Everett
Before Norma Mae, Field starred alongside Reynolds in four films, but she contends that she “really only did one movie with Burt,” believing that she was “just a girl” in their collaborations after 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit. “I just was stuck there because I was sort of stuck altogether,” she said. “It was a very complicated relationship.”
Field revealed that Reynolds tried to convince her to not attend Norma Rae‘s Cannes Film Festival premiere, where she ended up winning the first of many accolades.
“It was a standing ovation for like 10 minutes, and I started to cry,” she recalled. The film then was a hit upon its release, earning four Oscar nominations, with Field taking home the trophy for Best Actress. But Reynolds did not witness the big moment, having refused to attend. She previously revealed that he was “not happy” with the buzz she’d been receiving.
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Field and Reynolds broke up shortly after her Oscar victory, and their on-again, off-again relationship ended for good in 1982. Two years later, Field married her second husband, Alan Greisman, with whom she had a son with, before divorcing in 1994. Meanwhile, Reynolds was wed to actress Loni Anderson from 1988 to 1994.
“There were parts of Burt that were so wonderful and lovable,” Field said of the late actor, who died in 2018. “And then there were parts that were really frightening.”
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