Pacific Palisades resident Sally Fields to be recognized in Washington, D.C.
Receive Kennedy Center Honor
By BERNICE FOX
Special to Circling the News
It’s easy to think of Sally Field as a national treasure.
The people in charge at the Kennedy Center certainly agree. They’ve chosen Field as one of this year’s five recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors. The other honorees are Linda Ronstadt, Earth Wind and Fire, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and Sesame Street.
In making the announcement, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, David M. Rubenstein, said “The Kennedy Center Honors celebrates icons who through their artistry, have left an indelible stamp on our collective cultural consciousness.”
He noted that “Sally Field has brought us unforgettable characters, both joyous and poignant, for more than five decades.”
Field divides her time between her ocean view home in Pacific Palisades and her co-op apartment in New York City, but considers the Palisades to be her base.
She was born in Pasadena in 1946 and raised in Encino, graduating from Birmingham High School in 1964.
Her career took off in 1965 when she got the starring role in the “Gidget” TV series. “The Flying Nun” was next. She won an Emmy for playing a young woman with multiple personalities in the 1976 “Sybil” miniseries. Field starred in “Brothers and Sisters” and played Maura Tierney’s bipolar mother on “ER.” She won Emmys for both roles. Her Netflix series, “Maniac” just wrapped up. And she’s getting ready to film the new AMC anthology series “Dispatches from Elsewhere.”
Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln in the 2012 film “Lincoln.”
Field has won two Oscars: for “Norma Rae” and “Places in the Heart.” It was during her 1985 thank you speech for “Places in the Heart” that she said “I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me.” (She did not say “you really like me.”)
Some of Field’s other films over her long career include “Smokey and the Bandit,” “Steel Magnolias,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Forest Gump,” “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde,” “The Amazing Spider-Man” and many others. She’s also directed films and TV shows and she’s acted in some Broadway plays.
Field and the other honorees will receive their medallions at a State Department dinner in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, December 7. A gala ceremony at the Kennedy Center is set for Sunday, December 8. The gala is being filmed to air as a two-hour primetime special on CBS, Sunday, December 15.
Met her once strolling through the aisles at GELSONS. Introduced myself and told her how much I admired her work. She was gracious and modest and very friendly.