Bridget SharkeyFrom “Gidget,” to “Smokey and the Bandit,” to “Forrest Gump” and “Steel Magnolias,” Sally Field has been a Hollywood star from the 1960s all the way to the present day. So when the Screen Actors Guild gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award this past weekend, it was a richly deserved honor.
Andrew Garfield, who starred with Field in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” handed the 76-year-old icon her Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 SAG Awards.
“It was honestly, an honor,” Garfield said about being asked to present the award to Sally Field. “A true, true honor. Because these moments are very rare, and to be asked by someone that I admire and hold in the highest regard, as a north star of what we do, and as a human being.”
Field won her first Oscar in 1979 for her role as a hardworking single mother in “Norma Rae.” She also won an Academy Award for Best Actress for 1984’s “Places in the Heart,” and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mary Todd in “Lincoln.” She has also been nominated for several Golden Globes and has been the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards.
But she says this SAG Lifetime Achievement Award means the world to her, because it comes directly from her own peers.
Chris Pizzello / AP
“Thank you, thank you, thank you for this great honor, from you, the people I most wanted respect from in my life. Actors,” Field said during her speech.
Field acknowledges that an actor’s life is never easy, but that easy is overrated. And, for her, it was never about fame or fortune but about the craft itself.
“I wasn’t looking for the applause or the attention, even though that’s nice … sometimes,” said Field in her speech. “And it was never about a need to hide myself behind the characters of other people. Acting to me has always been about finding those few precious moments when I feel totally, utterly, sometimes dangerously alive. So the task has always been to find a way to get to that, to get to the work, to claw my way to it if necessary.”
This story was originally published by Bridget Sharkey on Simplemost.com.
