SALLY FIELD

The Oscar winner reveals how she finally found lasting happiness at 70.

Richard Field remembers how his younger sister Sally loved to pretend as a child. “Sally would pick something and act it out and I would play along with her,” he tells Closer exclusively. Through imaginary worlds of knights and princesses or cops and robbers, the siblings forged a deep bond. “Sally amazed me from the first time I saw her when I was 2 years old,” he says. “She’s still amazing.”

Since those innocent days in Pasadena, Calif., Sally’s traveled a long, hard road. The actress survived a bullying stepfather, two divorces and a public love affair (and breakup) with Burt Reynolds. Along the way, she’s won two Oscars and built a happy family of her own. Now, with her 70th birthday fast approaching in November, she’s feeling stronger, wiser and more satisfied due to the many lessons she’s learned. After years of searching for love and enduring painful losses, she’s finally found redemption.

“In so many ways I feel like I’m new to myself,” says Sally, who will celebrate her milestone on Nov. 6. “I’m moving on to the newest stage of my life, my 70s. There are things waiting for me that I couldn’t have found without getting here.”

Tom Hanks, her co-star in 1988’s Punchline and 1994’s Forrest Gump, can’t help but gush about her indefatigable work ethic and almost supernatural ability to disappear into a role. “I played a guy who made out with her and a guy she gave birth to,” Tom exclusively told Closer at the Simply Shakespeare benefit in LA. “She is an absolute stone-cold genius.”

Eve Ensler, the playwright famed for The Vagina Monologues, agrees.