SALLY FIELD
THE BELOVED ACTRESS DOESN’T NEED A MAN TO MAKE HER FEEL COMPLETE
Why the 72-year-old star is happier than ever — but not looking for love or marriage!
It seems only fitting that the former Flying Nun has apparently taken a vow of celibacy. “I don’t even try,” Sally Field says of looking for love. “I’m really happy with how I am, and I really don’t want to pick up your underwear in the morning, you know?” She’s been married and divorced twice, and “at 72, I’m realizing I really don’t want to start again,” she said at a LiveTalks L.A. Q&A about her new memoir, In Pieces. “I really like not worrying about someone else’s dinner.”
As Sally has learned, there’s a difference between loneliness and being alone. “Ultimately, what we have is just aloneness, and that sounds terrible, but it’s really glorious,” she says. “Because if you are all together inside yourself, owning yourself, and all the pieces are put together, you keep great company with yourself. You’re not alone in your aloneness — you’re together with yourself.”
PLACES IN THE HEART
That’s a lesson Sally has learned the hard way. She’s endured some painful splits, most notably with Burt Reynolds, her on- and offscreen leading man from 1977 to 1982. “He was an important part of my life for a very long period of time,” she says. “He was a catalyst for me in a lot of ways, and I probably was for him.”
Burt died at 82 in September, only 12 days before
In Pieces was published.
“Selfishly, I’m glad [he never read the book],” Sally says.
“It would’ve hurt him, and I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had.”
The mom of three may never have another romance, but “I found another love,” Sally says. “I, who found it difficult to find partners, have found love in my children and my work.”