by Sally Field
While they were setting up the last shot, Marty and I stepped outside to get some air and as soon as my eyes adjusted to the light I saw Burt, laughing and talking with the crew. I walked toward him, looking like a greasy-faced, sweaty mess, and hugged him, my arms wrapped around his neck. Even I could smell the unmistakable field-hand odor radiating from my body. But when my condition registered on his face, his disapproval an instant smack, I immediately turned around and walked back into the airless cocoon, keeping Norma away from Burt’s critical eye, leaving Marty to welcome him, shaking his hand. I was sitting on the floor in the corner, hovering over the performance, when Marty returned to the set, and after looking through the lens to check the shot, he sat on an apple box next to me, putting his hand on my shoulder. I looked at him from the corner of my eye without turning my head, and I could feel words through his steady tender grip. Words he didn’t need to say.
As with Sybil, I never stood outside of Norma Rae to see how much of her story was, in reality, mine. On first read she’d seemed as foreign as if she’d stepped from a flying saucer, but when Norma is pushed against the wall, when everything in her is on the line, she springs onto a worn worktable with a sign over her head—the coffee table of my past. Her struggle to stand up, her fight for respect, was the same as mine, for my work and myself. Through each day of working side by side with Marty, as Norma’s sense of dignity gradually emerged, I stood taller. As she unleashed her rage, I felt freed. When she found her voice, I heard mine. By standing in Norma’s shoes, I felt my own feet. If I could play her, I could be me.
20
The End of the Beginning
IN A SMALL screening room at Fox studios, I sat next to Baa, an audience of two as we watched Norma Rae for the first time together. As with Gidget fifteen years earlier, I’d never visualized the film becoming a product to be put in the marketplace. It was all so secondary to the experience of doing the work, secondary to having Marty in my life. Even after the film had wrapped, that moment when everyone vows eternal friendship only to vanish from sight, Marty had never let me go. Month’s later he was still reaching out, asking me to join him for lunch at the studio where his office was located, or Adele would invite me to their home for an early dinner, telling me to arrive at 5:30, and if I didn’t show up until 5:45, Marty, no doubt, would have started eating without me.
And as my mother and I sat in this tiny room with a huge screen, saying nothing when the film ended and the lights came up, I didn’t know what to think. I waited for Baa to respond, for her unbridled enthusiasm, her avalanche of joyous support allowing me to be joyous too. But she looked as numb as I felt and as we wandered out of the building, she sounded only lukewarm, expressing concern about Marty’s simplistic, documentary-style approach, saying, “I don’t think he helped you very much. He doesn’t even use any music.”
I worried that she thought it had nothing glamorous to offer, probably because I worried I had nothing glamorous to offer. I’m sure she was frightened for me; I was totally on the line. But even now I can hear the swipe she was taking at Marty, knocking him for his direction, and I distinctly remember pulling away from her, from the importance I’d always given to what she thought. I can see in my mind the two of us driving home that day, so different from the drive home after my first performance at school. We had both traveled an unimaginable distance since then. This time it was my hands on the wheel, my eyes on the road, away from hers as she watched my face. Feeling damned with faint praise I said, “It’s scary. It’s just me.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
What flashed through my head was the fear that I wasn’t enough to hold an audience for two hours. After a deep breath I exhaled. “Yikes. Bring on the dancing girls.”
Norma Rae was the first film in which I was the star, and from the moment I was given the role my mother’s reaction had seemed subdued. Did I feel that way then or is it just as I’m thinking of it now? She had so diligently stood by me, never complaining that she needed a life of her own, and when I’d dream of running off to live in New York or the mountains of Colorado or an apartment in Paris, she’d clasp her hands together with one smack, then hold them under her chin as if she were saying her prayers, “Oh… take me with you.” And all this time I’d thought that I had been taking her with me, thought that what was happening to me was happening to her as well. But it was not happening to her. It was happening to me… alone. I had grown out of her sphere of influence because it had happened to me, every day of my career had happened to me. Not her. I had left her behind and it jarred us both.
Marty called a few days later to tell me that Norma had been accepted into the Cannes Film Festival, which would be held, of course, in France. Up to that point, the only people who had seen the film were the production team and a cluster of 20th Century Fox executives, which included Alan Ladd Jr. (Laddy), head of the studio. But now the festival’s selection committee had clearly been added to that list. Plans were immediately put into motion; Laddy and his wife, along with several other executives, would be attending the festival. Marty and Adele were going, as were Hank and Irving (the Ravetches) and Beau Bridges (who is wonderful in the movie). They all agreed to fly to Paris, then down to the Côte d’Azur to stay in the historic Carlton Hotel for ten days. And they needed me.
Taking pictures of the paparazzi at Cannes. Beau and Marty thought I was nuts.
The change in me over the last months, since Norma wrapped, had been gradual but unmistakable. And even though I couldn’t completely sever the pull that Burt had on me, deeper, truer pieces of me had started to flare out, moments that were always met with Burt’s shocked disapproval. Who is this selfish, angry person? Where’s that sweet girl you used to be? That sweet girl I used to be had never existed, not singularly. And never would again. The dynamic between us had changed, because I had changed. He couldn’t hold on to me and I wouldn’t stand still. As I began pulling away, he tightened his grip, sometimes literally.
When I called to let him know I was planning to attend the festival, he asked in a huff what the hell I intended to do there. It was a waste of my time. But it was the South of France, I told him, and I’d never been there, hadn’t traveled to Europe since my one disastrous trip after Gidget with the girl who’d been my stand-in. His tone then changed to one of deep disappointment, explaining that I’d be seeing places he wanted to show me, that I was spoiling it for him. When I couldn’t be either bullied or seduced out of my decision, he lashed out: “You don’t expect to win anything, do you?” And I truly didn’t. Never even considered it. But I was going. And when I wouldn’t change my mind, he slammed the phone down, cutting off any more conversation—if that’s what it had been. For the eleven-hour 747 flight to Paris, I sat with Hank Ravetch, feeling wondrously free.
Why is it easier for me to write about the times in my life that felt humiliating or shameful? Is it because those are the things that haunt me? Do I hold on to those dark times as a badge of honor, are they my identity? The moments of triumph stay with me but speak so softly that they’re hard to hear—and even harder to talk about.
I remember my tiny corner room on the eighth floor in the big Carlton Hotel, and how I had packed for the South of France not knowing that the South of France can be freezing in May, and how I would wrap myself in the twin-size satin duvet and stand in front of the armoire, sliding my few flimsy outfits back and forth, wishing something warm would miraculously appear. I remember how the phones rarely worked when I tried to call the kids, and how I never felt the pressure of Burt since we weren’t speaking. And the French windows opening out onto the Croisette—the promenade along the beach below—and how I’d stand outside on the half-moon balcony, watching the carnival-like commotion, and later, the swarm of paparazzi taking pictures of me while I used my Instamatic camera to take pictures of them. I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday—seeing a whole new world after spending a lifetime locked behind the palace gates.
Before the n
ew Palais des Festivals was built in 1983, films at the Cannes Film Festival premiered in an enormous theater, famously atop twenty-four majestic stone stairs. The interior of the theater looked like a movie set for The Phantom of the Opera, and those associated with the film were seated for the screening in a grand baroque balcony at the back of this Gothic space. I had never seen the film with an audience, much less with one of the notorious audiences at Cannes—didn’t even know they were notorious until the night before, when Marty and Laddy tried to prepare me. Throughout the dinner they carefully explained that, unlike demure American audiences, this group could react vociferously if they didn’t like what they saw. And if they weren’t booing, then they were walking out in droves. I wasn’t sure how anyone could be prepared for that.
By the time we were finally grouped together in the elaborate balcony I was almost catatonic with nerves, and when Marty, Beau, and I were separated from the others, then seated in the front row, my knees were literally knocking. This was the Queen Mary of theaters and being in the front row of the back balcony felt like we were on the edge of Mount Everest. Not only were my knees vibrating, but I was now flooded with vertigo and the fear that if I stood up too fast, I’d tumble over the edge onto the velvet seats below, dead before the lights even went down. But then they did go down, and the film flickered away.
Marty held my hand the whole time.
Every scene felt torturously long, without a single entertaining moment, topped off with the achingly slow roll of the end credits, an endless list that went on and on while everyone in the packed opera house sat, making no noise at all. They didn’t applaud, but hell, they didn’t boo either. They were motionless in their seats. When the studio’s logo finally scrolled by, there was a moment of darkness, and then, suddenly, bright spotlights flared onto the balcony, smack into our faces. And in one connected group, the people below rose to their feet, turned to us, and cheered. They stood applauding for ten minutes. Marty—who had been holding my hand because I was visibly trembling—gently slid away, moving to the side, extending his arm in my direction as he retreated. And I heard the surge that was meant only for me, the sound of that universal appreciation, recognition, and regard for my work. I started to cry.
I won the Palme d’Or for best actress and went on to win every award for best actress that existed in the United States that year. Including the Academy Award.
21
Me, My Mother, and Mary Todd
AFTER NORMA RAE I was considered to be an honest-to-God movie star. Although I was never besieged with offers the way I’d always dreamed it would be, every year one compelling screenplay would come my way and I’d be thrilled, not to mention relieved. But even after winning my second Academy Award in 1984 for Places in the Heart—a film I was proud to be a part of—I never saw myself as being an important, highly sought-after talent at the top of my game.
Slowly, very slowly, I became aware of a soft buzzing, a voice telling me to prepare myself because soon my hard-fought position would be gone. Even as I tried to evolve into each phase of my career, building a production company, developing and producing films—including Murphy’s Romance, which my beloved friend Marty Ritt directed—this whispering voice kept repeating that before long I’d be facing the same mountain that I had just climbed, but without the strength to move anymore.
When I was thirty-eight, a rather flimsy project was presented to me, and while the film might have been dull, the producer was not. He was a tall, gentle man who enjoyed being around people, someone who made friendships less difficult for me. He was easy to like, good to have around, and since I wanted a family and needed to feel safe, I married him. That was Alan. Once again, I packed up my two sons, now twelve and fifteen, and we all moved, this time to a home in Brentwood.
Three years later, when Eli was preparing to get his driver’s license and Peter was a freshman in college, I gave birth to my third son. At forty-one, I was the mother of a newborn again and it didn’t hit me until Sam was five weeks; as a parent, I was starting all over—from the very bottom of the mountain.
I remember sitting in the baby’s room wrapped in the arms of a huge stuffed bear that had been flung into the corner, feeling stunned. I was looking down at this tiny stranger’s face nursing at my breast when suddenly I didn’t want to do any of it anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t adore this little boy whose eyes had instantly latched onto mine. It was that I didn’t want to love him as deeply as I knew I would. Didn’t want to care about my work or whether Peter was finding his way or Eli was driving safely. Didn’t want to worry about money or my weight or what to cook for dinner. After spending my whole adult life struggling to find more, the only thing I wanted now was to put a Closed sign on my forehead and sit in this corner staring at the wall. Perhaps in that way Alan had been a perfect choice. Without meaning to, and through no fault of his own, he had allowed me to become a stationary, lifeless lump, unseen by him and unaware of myself.
For all ten years of our marriage we lived in that one place, the Brentwood house. But like a dog chewing on a hot spot, I was constantly fussing with it, irritated and uncomfortable. Endlessly I’d move the furniture from room to room, then change all the carpets and the paint color, remodeling the whole thing more than once. Even after deciding that it wasn’t the house causing my discomfort but the marriage, even after divorcing Alan with one unemotional blow, I remained stationary. Ultimately, I lived in the Brentwood house for almost nineteen years, telling myself it was better for Sam. But in reality, I didn’t know where to move or how to find comfort.
Then in 2004—and for no apparent reason—the evil spell was broken. Instead of standing stock-still, I was flooded with my need to run away: to pack my bags, my boxes, my son, and disappear. I sold my lovely, perfectly situated Brentwood home for a perfectly disgusting five-bedroom house at the top of the Malibu mountains, a house as isolated and hard to reach as I was. But hell, I would have moved to a deserted island if it hadn’t been for Sam. Now sixteen, with his two last years of high school to finish, he had become my connection with the world. I may not have wanted to love him, but I did, and just like it had always been with his brothers, I would have turned myself inside out for him. But unlike how it had been with his brothers, I’d lost the strength to leave him when I worked, simply couldn’t do it anymore. So I carted him with me. Starting when he was not quite six months old, Sam was my location sidekick: in Louisiana for Steel Magnolias, in San Francisco for Mrs. Doubtfire, in South Carolina for Forrest Gump. He and Baa even traveled with me to Israel, where we stayed for three months to shoot Not Without My Daughter.
But after each film—some more successful than others—the feelings of accomplishment would quickly disappear, drizzling out through an invisible crack inside me, a crack that seemed to be growing. Even when my movie career was securely chugging along, even before the first stall—dips that always occur—I began to feel defeated. It was like I was looking for it, waiting for it to happen, wanting to believe the same words about myself that I’d worked so hard to erase from people’s minds long ago; that I was trivial, uninteresting, a lightweight. I believed it about myself whether anyone else did or not, and I was constantly looking for someone or something to make me change my mind… about me.
Trying to protect little Sammy’s ears at a very loud wrap party with Olympia, Shirley, Dolly, and Julia. The stupendous women.
During a social gathering in 2005, Steven Spielberg took my arm, pulling me to the side, and as we stood in the corner he explained that he’d purchased the film rights to the wonderfully dense Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. He wasn’t sure how long it would take to find the perfect writer, but once that screenplay was in his hand, he said emphatically, “I want you to play Mary Todd.” To portray the much-maligned, mentally challenged Mrs. Lincoln in a film directed by one of the most creative filmmakers who has ever lived was an opportunity I felt with every cell in my body. Yet I remember faking an excitement I couldn’t quite
find, as if I’d already seen the movie of my life and knew the ending. When I walked away that day the droning voice inside my head warned, Don’t start wanting that. It will never happen!
I don’t know if I had accurately foreseen the future or if I became my own self-fulfilling prophecy, but throughout my fifties I felt crippled with grief because the love of my life was dying. Not a lover, or a husband. My work. I was forever saying to myself, This is what you’ve got and who cares? Does it really matter? Do you need to be in prestigious films, in leading roles? Just find some work, somewhere, and if it happens to be a character in a story worth telling, fine. If not, suck it up and do it anyway. And somehow, I did, earning enough to give all three of my children the education I had longed for my whole life. Then, when Sam was heading off for his freshman year at NYU, and Peter and Eli were launching their own careers and marriages, were becoming parents themselves, when I was turning sixty and felt like the sinking ship on which my whole family was standing, I agreed to do another television series, Brothers and Sisters, once again on ABC.