Sally Field Biography

Sally Field has twice won best actress Oscars: for the labor drama Norma Rae (1979) and for Places In the Heart (1984, with John Malkovich).

Sally Field got her start playing spunky-but-naive young women in the 1960s TV series Gidget (1965-66) and then The Flying Nun (1967-70, with Field as a young novice whose outfit absurdly gave her the ability to fly). She expanded her range in the 1970s, appearing with Jeff Bridges in the drama Stay Hungry (1976, with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and getting raves for her performance as a young woman with multiple personality disorder in the TV movie Sybil (1976).

Her success in the 1980s allowed her to produce movies, including Steel Magnolias (1989) and Dying Young (1991), both starring Julia Roberts. In the late 1990s, Field was still appearing in the movies and spending time behind the camera, directing two TV movies and the theatrical release of Beautiful (2000). She also found work in television, including a recurring role on E.R. and a short-lived series, The Court (2002).

Sally Fields joined the cast of the TV drama series Brothers & Sisters in 2006, (along with Calista Flockhart and Rob Lowe) and earned an Emmy for best actress in a dramatic series. She played lovable Aunt Mae in the reboots The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014, both with Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man), and was Oscar-nominated for her role as Mary Todd Lincoln in the 2012 film Lincoln (with Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln).

In 2017 she was nominated for a Tony Award for her work as aging Southern belle Amanda Winfield in a Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie.