The double Oscar winner’s best-loved roles

Norma Rae

Field won her first Oscar for her portrayal of the eponymous Norma Rae, a cotton-mill worker who crusades to improve working conditions for herself and her colleagues. The film received a rapturous reception at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979 and the experience marked the beginning of a long-time friendship and collaboration between Field and director Martin Ritt.

Smokey and the Bandit

Field, still a relative unknown, achieved worldwide fame when she was cast alongside Hollywood icon Burt Reynolds in the 1977 action comedy Smokey and the Bandit. She played Carrie, a hitchhiker and love interest to the Reynolds truck driver lead, Bo ‘Bandit’ Darville. It became the second highest grossing film of the year. It was on the set of Smokey and the Bandit that Field and Reynolds began their love affair.

Forrest Gump

“Life is like a box of chocolates” became the ever-quotable line credited to Field’s character Mrs Gump, the loving and unfailingly supportive mother whose unstinting devotion is the fuel that powers slowwitted Forrest through a gamut of extraordinary experiences and achievements. A southern gentlewoman, with her downhome wisdom, Mrs Gump, as portrayed by Field injected a shot of warmth and compassion into this heartwarming, classic film from 1993. Field won her second Oscar in 1985 for her portrayal of a care-worn Texan who takes over the family’s debt-ridden cotton farm after her husband dies. Played alongside Danny Glover and John Malkovich, this is a quiet character piece in which Field’s Edna endures almost insurmountable challenges. Field fought tooth and nail to convince director Steven Spielberg to cast her as Mrs Lincoln to Daniel Day Lewis’s Abe in 2012. He turned her down once before he was finally moved to reconsider. For Field, winning the chance to play Mary Lincoln represented the culmination of all that she had battled to achieve over her career. She was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal.