On Sunday, Sally Field received the lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Andrew Garfield presented his award to Field. He called Field “one of the greatest actors to ever live”.
Garfield praised Field as a “star in the North” and urged “people under 30” to watch Field’s first television series, Gadget. He praised her for playing complex women early in her career at a time when female characters were often one-dimensional.
He also praised Field for his humility. “You never drink the Kool-Aid of your own genius,” Garfield said. “You never get high on your own supply. But tonight we will try to make you.
Garfield went on to highlight Field’s off-screen work, celebrating her as a women’s rights fighter, woman in the media, and ally of the LGBTQ community. And, he added, “She won a lot of shit. She won so much shit.
The awards show celebrated Field’s nearly six-decade career with a montage highlighting a “little slice is genius” of his greatest hits. The presentation included clips depicting moving moments from Emergencies, Steel Magnolias, Norma Rae, Forrest Gump and more.
Upon accepting the award, Field recounted the first lines she ever recited on camera to Gadget. “All of a sudden, I was the star of a TV series,” and she joined the Screen Actors Guild.
Growing up, Field says, she felt shy, cautious and hidden, but on stage she could be freely herself. Although she clarified, acting was never a need to hide behind her characters, but saw the craft as an opportunity to feel “totally, totally, sometimes dangerously, alive”.
“There isn’t a day that I don’t feel quietly thrilled to call myself an actor,” Field said.
The actress recently starred in the comedy 80 for Brady and won two Oscars during her career. She debuted in the 1965 television series Gadget. Fields played the title character, a 15-year-old California girl on her way to adulthood. The season-long comedy followed Gidget as she got into trouble and received advice from her widowed father, played by Don Porter.
In 1967, Field starred as Sister Bertrille in another television comedy, The Flying Nun. Sister Bertrille was a novice in her convent in Puerto Rico when she discovered that her large headdress could cause her to fly in a strong breeze. The series aired for three seasons.
That same year, Field starred in his first film, the western path, opposite Kirk Douglas. She went on to appear in numerous television series and films before winning her first Oscar in 1979 for playing the title character in Norma Rae, a film based on the true story of a woman who worked in a textile factory and rallied her colleagues to unionize for better conditions.
Field won her second Oscar in 1984 for playing Edna Spalding, a woman who struggles to keep her family and her home after her husband was killed in an accident during the Great Depression, in Places of the Heart.
She has appeared in other films including Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire, Forrest Gump And spoiler alertamong others.