Sally Field Says Ex Burt Reynolds Resented Her Success, Wouldn't Attend Oscars The Year She Won

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | January 4, 2024 |

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | January 4, 2024 |

Retro gossip alert! Sally Field spilled some major “Burt Reynolds is an asshole (um, duh)” tea in Dave Karger’s new book 50 Oscar Nights. Sally, now 77, recalls how her then-boyfriend Burt refused to accompany her to the 1980 Oscars when she was nominated for Best Actress in Norma Rae. Apparently, Burt “wasn’t happy” (read: jealous) about his girlfriend’s career-changing role. How lovely.

Burt didn’t even want Sally to go to Norma Rae’s premiere at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival: “He said, ‘You don’t think you’re going to win anything, do you?’” Luckily, Burt was wrong. Cannes gave Sally the Best Actress statue. She proceeded to pick up a Golden Globe and a bunch of other high-falutin’ awards. In 1980, she was nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, via People:

“When the Oscars came around, he really was not a nice guy around me then and was not going to go with me,” Field reveals. For the 1980 show, it was actor and comedian David Steinberg and his then-wife, Judy, who came to the rescue to celebrate what would be her first Academy Award win.

Field “didn’t know what to do” about not having a date to the ceremony, she says. “Then David said, ‘Well, for God’s sakes, we’ll take you.’ He and Judy made it a big celebration. They picked me up in a limousine and had champagne in the car. They made it just wonderful fun.”

Sally says she had a fun night. She had a professional do her hair but covered her own makeup (“In those days, you just did it yourself”). The legendary Bob Mackie offered to make her dress, which Sally thought looked like “a little white suit.” When she asked Bob why she didn’t get “a princess dress”, he replied that he didn’t think she was that fancy. HA! She adds that he was “such a lovely guy.”

But back to Burt Reynolds. Sally and Burt dated for five years after meeting on the set of Smokey and the Bandit. They co-starred in three other movies during this time: the Smokey sequel, The End, and Hooper. The couple broke up in 1980 but dated on and off until 1982.

While Sally’s movie career took off in the eighties, Burt’s declined. He turned down Jack Nicholson’s role in Terms of Endearment (1983) to do another car-chase comedy, Stroker Ace. It flopped. Jack went on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Wah wah. Burt later said it was his biggest career regret.

Before his death in 2018 at age 82, Burt said he felt Sally was the woman he should have married and had kids with. What a fun thing for ex Loni Anderson and their son to hear! When asked why he and Sally split, Burt said, “I screwed up.” Sally’s memoir, In Pieces, came out days after Burt died. In the book, she wrote that he was “a hugely important part of my life but for a very short period of my life… I really didn’t speak to him for the last 30 years of his life.”

Here’s Sally winning for Norma Rae in 1980 (the “you like me” win was in 1985, for Places in the Heart):

Fun fact: nominees Jane Fonda, Marsha Mason, and Jill Clayburgh all passed on playing textile worker Norma Rae before Sally got the role. Ooooh, they must have been pissed.