<\/p>\n
Sally Field<\/a> thought she was going to “pass out” on her first date<\/a> with Burt Reynolds.<\/p>\n The Oscar-winning actress, 79, spoke candidly on the latest episode of TCM’s Talking Pictures podcast<\/a> about the nerve-racking start of her relationship with her Smokey and the Bandit co-star, who died in 2018 at the age of 82.<\/p>\n Field recalled initially getting a call from Reynolds as he sussed her out as a potential Smokey and the Bandit co-star, which “shocked” the young actress, as she was best known at the time for starring in ABC<\/a>‘s teen sitcom<\/a>Gidget and the TV movie Sybil.<\/p>\n “I was so shocked that he would call me, and I thought, ‘He couldn’t have seen Sybil, because boy, I look really like a very mentally ill person in it,'” Field remembered. “And he said, ‘No, I hadn’t seen it. I just always liked you in Gidget.'”<\/p>\n Field agreed to meet Reynolds for a date, but admitted she was “so nervous” she feared she would “pass out.”<\/p>\n “I hadn’t really ever been on any dates,” the Remarkably Bright Creatures star explained. “I started when I was 18 in television, and the whole world of that ilk was swept away from me.”<\/p>\n When the time for their date came, Field said she felt completely out of her depth, as Reynolds’ bodyguard had to be the one to knock on her door.<\/p>\n “I went down, and I remember just sort of being a fool, a clown. I only know how to be a clown when I’m nervous,” she recalled, adding that the evening was “all a blur” due to her nerves. “Like, what was I doing there? I didn’t know. I had learned how to be an actor, but I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know how to be that girl.”<\/p>\n Field and Reynolds would go on to have a tumultuous five-year relationship starting in 1976, and today, the Steel Magnolias star remembers him as a “wonderful, but incredibly complicated” man.<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Parade<\/a> on Jun 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the News<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sally Field thought she was going to “pass out” on her first date with Burt Reynolds. The Oscar-winning actress, 79, spoke candidly on the latest episode of TCM’s Talking Pictures podcast about the nerve-racking start of her relationship with her Smokey and the Bandit co-star, who died in 2018 at the age of 82. Field […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2460481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[313833,344471,394021,483957],"class_list":["post-2460480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-burt-reynolds","tag-sally-field","tag-smokey-and-the-bandit","tag-talking-pictures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Sally-Field-Reveals-Why-She-Was-So-Nervous-on-Her.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460480"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2460482,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460480\/revisions\/2460482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2460481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}