The Oscar-winning actress has revealed how years of rejection after her sitcom fame finally shifted when Jack Nicholson spotted her work at the Actors Studio and recommended her for a breakthrough film role.
Sally Field has revealed Jack Nicholson played a pivotal role in rescuing her early Hollywood career.
After studios dismissed her as little more than the star of The Flying Nun,
the two-time Oscar winner, 79, reflected on the struggle to be taken seriously as an actress during a new interview, explaining the success of her early television sitcoms left her effectively blacklisted from more substantial dramatic roles.
Sally told People: “(I) couldn’t get in a room to audition. I couldn’t get on the list. They thought they already knew what I was. ‘No, thanks. We don’t want any of that’.”
The actress also explained she eventually adopted a personal philosophy focused on improving her craft rather than fighting Hollywood’s assumptions about her.
Sally said: “I had to say to myself that if I wasn’t where I wanted to be, I had to get better.”
She added: “Hollywood may be rotten and unfair, but it had to be that it was on me to make it different. I felt if I wasn’t doing that, then I was just handing them all the power.”
Determined to reshape her career, Sally began studying at the famed Actors Studio in Los Angeles under legendary acting coach Lee Strasberg.
During the period, she regularly worked alongside established performers including Jack Nicholson, now 89, who was also attending the sessions.
Sally said: “Everybody used to come. It was packed. You couldn’t get in.”
She explained she immersed herself completely in acting training.
Sally said: “I said to myself, ‘It will change when I’m good enough’. And ultimately, in a weird way, it happened because I was acting at the studio so much.”
According to Sally, Jack eventually noticed her performances during classes and recommended her to casting director Dianne Crittenden and filmmaker Bob Rafelson.
Sally said Jack described her as “an undiscovered talent”.
The recommendation led to her first major industry meeting since Gidget, with Sally eventually landing a role in Stay Hungry, the 1976 comedy-drama directed by Rafelson and starring Jeff Bridges, alongside then-newcomer Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Sally said: “So in some weird way, my theory was right. I worked at the Actors Studio for so long – and it was so hard – that Jack had seen it and the word spread.”
She added the role “was the beginning of the change” in her career.
The breakthrough transformed Sally from a sitcom actress into one of Hollywood’s most respected dramatic performers.
The same year Stay Hungry was released, she won an Emmy Award for the miniseries Sybil, before later achieving critical acclaim in Smokey and the Bandit, Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. Sally ultimately won Academy Awards for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, while continuing to build a decades-long career spanning film, television and theatre.
Sally Field credits Jack Nicholson with saving her career
