Sally Field wanted to 'pass out' with nerves ahead of Burt Reynolds date
Sally Field thought she would "pass out" with nerves before her first date with Burt Reynolds because she had never dated anyone before.
Sally Field thought she would "pass out" with nerves before her first date with Burt Reynolds.
The 79-year-old actress got her big break in ABC sitcom Gidget as a teenager, which she followed up with TV movie Sybil, and was amazed when she got a call from the actor to discuss potentially working with him on Smokey and the Bandit, but despite her feeling of anxiety, she agreed to meet with him so they could get to know one another better.
Speaking on TCM's Talking Pictures podcast, she joked: "I got this phone call, and it was from Burt Reynolds, and he wanted me to do this film, and the script was really, really bad, he said. And it was really, really bad.
"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.' And he said, 'No, I hadn't seen it. I just always liked you in Gidget.' "
After agreeing to a date, she recalled: "I was so nervous, I thought I would pass out. I hadn't really ever been on any dates. I started when I was 18 in television and the whole world of that ilk was swept away from me."
The Steel Magnolias star admitted the evening passed by in a "blur" and she resorted to humour to cover her nerves.
She said: "He couldn't come in the lobby. So he had his bodyguard, Pete, [who] knocked on my door. 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.
"We went — did we even go to dinner? — yeah, we went to dinner. I think there were others there... I just was nervous. It was all a blur.
"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."
Sally and Burt - who died in 2018 aged 82 - went on to date for five years and made four movies together, Smokey and the Bandit and its 1980 sequel, Hooper, and The End, but the actress admitted their relationship was difficult.
She said: "Burt was a wonderful, but incredibly complicated character man, who was very much like my stepfather that I grew up with.
"And I had a really tumultuous relationship with my stepfather. He frightened me and he tormented me, and yet, I worshiped him."
Earlier this year, Sally accused Burt of trying to "control" her as she explained the begining of the end of their relationship was when she refused to give into his insistence she turn down a role in 1979's Norma Rae.
She told People magazine: “It was the beginning of me pulling away when he didn't want me to do Norma Rae, called her a whore, and it was because she had some sexual past. He threw the script at me.
"He wanted to control me, and because I was standing up, he said, 'Boy, you're letting this get the better of you.' And I said, 'This is the better of me.' And I went and I met with [director] Marty Ritt. I did the film. But it was the beginning of me finding my legs."
Sally's partner ultimately refused to attend the Oscars with her when she won the Best Lead Actress award and they eventually split for good in 1982.
She said:“Being Norma at that time was exactly what I needed, because to learn how to stand in her shoes, I think I said this [in her 2018 memoir In Pieces], I could feel my own legs.
“I could feel my body getting stronger. Because I was having to portray how she grew up, I started to grow up, and I eventually just wouldn't be manipulated and humiliated like that. And ultimately I left.”
