Sally Field will receive a Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild. She’s seen here with her dog last October at a Pacific Palisades neighborhood event.
Photo: Rosalie Huntington
By BERNICE FOX
There’s no denying it. Sally Field is liked by the Screen Actors Guild – and by just about everyone else. So much so, that the guild is giving her its highest honor: the Life Achievement Award.
“Sally is an amazing actor with an enormous range and an uncanny ability to embody any character,” said SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher in announcing the Pacific Palisades resident as the latest recipient of the honor. No matter the role, Drescher said Field “never stopped being extraordinary.”
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 with her 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 character’s bipolar mother on ER. She won Emmys for both roles.
Field has won two Oscars: for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. She was nominated for an Oscar for playing Mary Todd Lincoln in Lincoln. 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.”)
Sally Field
Photo: Screen Actors Guild
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 Broadway plays.
Field’s newest film, 80 for Brady, hits theaters February 3. She stars along with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and former Palisades honorary mayor Rita Moreno.
SAG-AFTRA President Drescher had more to say about Sally Field when announcing the upcoming award.
“Sally is a massive star with a working actor’s ethos — just keep doing the work, being as good as you can. Every stage of an actor’s life brings different opportunities, and you just need to keep working. Sally does not stop, and we hope she never does.”
Field will receive her Life Achievement Award during the SAG Awards Sunday, February 26 at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel. The show can be seen online via the Netflix YouTube channel at this link: https://www.youtube.com/Netflix.