Sally Field Interview (page: 4 / 8) Two Oscars for Best Actress	Print Interview

In those days there seemed to be a real schism between TV actors and film actors. These days it's almost reversed, because there's such great television and so many great actors, including yourself, on television. But back then, it was a stigma almost.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Sally Field: It was a stigma. I mean television was thought of as, you know, the poor relation to film. And there is still a little of that. There's still a little of that. It's a little snobbery, a class system that existed. But in 1960, you know, late '60s, early '70s it was impossible, especially if you came for something called The Flying Nun. It was impossible to make that transition. It just couldn't be done. It wasn't that I couldn't get the part, I couldn't get in the door. I couldn't get on the list. Most especially because I was the Flying Nun. It was an important journey to change that. It made me learn some really valuable lessons, and that is that if I wasn't where I wanted to be, it was because I wasn't good enough, period. Period. It wasn't because they weren't letting me in the door. It wasn't because they were against me, or they thought I was something else, or, "They, they, they." It was simply because I wasn't good enough. That the minute I gave my power away to them I was lost. And I didn't try to get in the door. I didn't try.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Get the Flash Player to see this video. You know, I barely had an agent who cared whether I lived or died. And what was bizarre is that that's how it happened. That I'd worked so hard at the Actor's Studio, that I started to get this kind of little underground reputation. It was also during this incredible time in American film in the '70s when American film was changing. And at the Actor's Studio was Ellen Burstyn and Jack Nicholson and things were changing. And I got in on an audition, not because of my agent, but because of someone who had worked with me at the Actor's Studio and told someone that people thought they knew who I was, but I wasn't that. And I came in on the audition. By then I knew how to audition. I knew that I couldn't come in as Sally Field, this still rather unsophisticated person. I had to come in as the character. It was for a film called Stay Hungry. Bob Rafelson, a wonderful director certainly, at a really important time in American film. I had to come and convince him that I was this absolute floozy, this tart, this sleep-around kind of girl -- uneducated, Southern, sleep-around little floozy girl. And I was uneducated, but I wasn't any of the other things, but I knew how to be that character. I knew how to play the role. I also knew that an audition starts from the moment I started to get dressed and leave the house, and that the acting had to be...that he had to then believe that everything else I'd done to that point, Gidget and The Flying Nun, was an incredible acting job. I mean really I was just this absolute tart.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

And that's what I did. He did everything he could do to not hire me.

We've read that you overheard him saying, "Why did you bring Sally Field?"

Sally Field: Exactly. I heard him yelling at the casting person. She'd brought me in because of someone who'd worked with me. She was Diane Crittenden, who was a wonderful casting person who would do these outrageous things because she heard something. I heard him yelling at her saying, "Why would you waste my time? This is Sally Field! What are you thinking?" Of course, by then I had had Lee Strasberg in my life, who was one of my important mentors, a really important and phenomenal teacher who taught me how to use that in a way that wasn't going to get in my way. Actually, it was fuel. It was like, "Open the door and watch out!" I knew how to do it, and I did it.

So he did hire you after all.

Sally Field: He did. It wasn't easy. I had to test and test and test and test and test. And he called everyone he knew saying, "Could this be possible?" And he would say just outrageous things to me. He would call me and say, "You can't possibly be the best one. It must be because you've auditioned more than anyone else." I said, "This is the second audition I've ever been on in my life." First one was for Gidget. So bless his heart, Bob Rafelson, he had the guts to do it. They were really gritty, raw films -- to come through The Flying Nun and that -- and that was my first real role.

This was a time of activism for people in the film industry, and for people in the country as a whole. Did you have any role at all in the activism of the 60s?

Sally Field: I didn't really understand it. I tried a little bit. I came from a Republican family that was kind of involved, but not really. I wasn't ever encouraged to think about my country or my fellow man. I had a journey to go before I could get there. I had some people to meet to change that. One of them came up later that was the, probably the most important, other than Lee. Lee Strasberg was incredibly important, but Marty Ritt, who directed Norma Rae, changed who I was. Not only my career, but changed me.

Before we get to Norma Rae, can you tell us what you learned from Lee Strasberg? We know it's hard to encapsulate ten years of study in a few minutes, but he really is a legend.

Sally Field: Rightfully so. I don't believe that teachers like that exist today, certainly not in acting. He was dedicated to it and he was brilliant.

Was he an actor too?

Sally Field: He had been, and he later went back to acting, later in his life, and he was wonderful. He was in The Godfather II. He was in a lot of movies then.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. He was a wonderful actor, but I'm sure he was a better teacher, only because he was a phenomenal teacher. A lot of people said he was cruel. I saw him sometimes being ruthless, because he just wouldn't put up with it. I guess he could be cruel. But, I never called it cruel. I called it "tough love" in a way. Acting? Come on, you know? You either got it or you don't, in a lot of ways, and it's not going to help you to get coddled. It's not going to help you for somebody to pat you on the head and hear you, tell you some words you want to hear. What really is going to help you is for someone to kick you right in the rear end, and tell you the truth, and tell you a great deal of information about this complicated craft called acting that has been here since Greek days. It is, I believe, an important art form that human beings need, to see other human beings telling stories through their bodies, and that's what Lee Strasberg taught how to do.

Who worked with you at that time with Strasberg? Where there other actors at the Studio who had an impact on you?

Sally Field: Oh yeah. Gosh, lots. They were in and out all the time. I think I was more possessed than a lot of them. But you know, Richard Dreyfuss was in and out, Jack Nicholson was in and out, Ellen Burstyn was there all the time, and Bruce Dern was there all the time. Ron Rifkin, who I work with now (in Brothers and Sisters), I saw in and out all the time there. He lived a lot in New York, so I was the Los Angeles version. But I'd run into people all the time. Those days don't exist like that, because I guess Lee isn't there, and because film was changing. Film was just this lively vibrant thing. Movies were not made with the budgets they are now, and things were changing fast and acting was changing. The Actor's Studio in Hollywood was just lit up with the thought of it, and people pushing out of their own boundaries.

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