Sally Field Reflects On Her Decades-Long Career From ‘Gidget’ To ‘Lincoln’ In SAG Life Achievement Award Acceptance Speech
27.02.2023 - 05:51
/ deadline.com
Accepting the Life Achievement Award during Sunday night’s SAG Awards, Sally Field reminisced on her decades-long career and her rise from the star of a situational comedy in the 1960s to a decorated veteran actor.
Field accepted the award from Andrew Garfield, who acted alongside her in The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel. Garfield called her a “pioneer” of the entertainment industry who “has devoted her life off screen to righteous advocacy.”
“Sally is the epitome of acting greatness — inspired, unafraid of going deep and raw and overflowing with empathy,” he said.
When she took the stage, Field spoke of being a part of projects that “were so good that my hands shook the first time I read them,” explaining that “they opened and revealed parts of myself I would not have known otherwise.”
“I’ve flown on wires and surfed in the ocean, rode on horses, in wagons, trains and fast cars. I had multiple personalities. I worked in a textile mill, picked cotton. I’ve been Mrs. Doubtfire’s employer, Forrest Gump’s mother, Lincoln’s wife and Spider Man’s aunt. I’ve done scenes wearing 50 pounds of period dresses. I’ve been fully clothed, semi clothed and totally naked,” she said, calling out Jeff Bridges by jokingly adding: “Huh, Jeff? Don’t you know?”
She also remembered her very first acting role in the 1965 ABC series Gidget, which led allowed her to join the Screen Actors Guild and eventually led to her lifetime of acting.
“In the fall of 1964, I was standing in front of a camera on a freezing cold beach in Malibu and I said my first lines of dialogue as a professional actor,” she said. “I was 17, fresh out of high school. I didn’t have an agent, and I was working under what’s called the Taft Hartley law. A few months