“You can’t say which is more difficult – both have been the acting challenges of my life,” the Oscar winner said.
Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior editor at Entertainment Weekly with more than seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she has written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, etc. She worked at EW for six years covering film, television, theater, music and books. Author of EW’s quarterly romance review column, “Hot Stuff,” Maureen holds Master’s degrees from both the University of Southern California and Oxford University. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight, is available now. Follow her for all things classic Hollywood, musicals, romance, and Bruce Springsteen.
Sally Field seems to have a talent for playing mothers who have lost their children.
The 76-year-old actress delivered one of the most iconic on-screen monologues ever as M’Lynn in 1989’s Steel Magnolias when she broke down at the grave of her daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts). In Spoiler Alert, in extended limited release on December 9, she lives through another family tragedy, saying goodbye to her son Kit (Ben Aldridge) when he dies of cancer.
“Emotional work is always difficult,” Field says. “But I know that this isn’t like Steel Magnolias or a lot of the other things I’ve done, where you feel like you’re slitting your wrists and losing years of your life because of how hard you have to work to get there. get these things. feeling. location. The task is to stay away from it until it is ready to shoot, because it is still there and too primitive. The difficulty [here] is not to feel it until it is time to feel it.”
So would Field call Steel Magnolias a more difficult scene to play? “You can’t say it any stronger,” she refused. “Both are acting challenges in my life. Steel Magnolias, that monologue is a great monologue. Every aspiring actor tries to conquer that monologue. It has everything. But you get in your car at the end of the day and the best feeling is when you can go home and say, ‘Okay, I’ve done my job. I did what I knew to do.’ Could you have done better? Maybe there always is. But today I did the best I could at work, that’s all.”
Field reunites with Brothers and Sisters showrunner David Marshall Grant and Hello, My Name Is Doris director Michael Showalter for spoiler Alert, adapted from journalist Michael Ausiello’s memoir about losing his longtime partner me, Kit, because of cancer. She plays Marilyn, Kit’s mother.
We called Field to talk about the heavy roles, improvisation, and having to believably play a triathlete.
SALLY FIELD: This came to me because I got a call from two of my favorite people in this industry or on Earth – Michael Showalter and David Marshall Grant. When they called each other and said they were working on a project, I said, “Oh, you two are together.” They want me in there. I said, “Sure, I’m there. I’m in.” And they said, “Oh, at least read it first, okay?” I did, and it was a lovely story about how hard it is to love someone, no matter how hard it is. is it loving the parents, loving the children or this couple. To what extent did you seek out details about Marilyn and Kit? every day, but even though it’s from his memoir, I won’t play his memoir. Marilyn and Bob (Bill Irwin) actually exist, thank God Now that I met them, I knew they were very private people. We had to take what was in the script and bring it to life accurately describe who Marilyn really was. Is that exactly what happened? Who knows if those words are verbatim? it’s one thing if you’re playing a historical figure where people know what they look like or how they behave or how they sound or walk or any of that – then divide hand. Your responsibility is to make the person through you come to life as much as possible, trying to recreate their voice or walk. But I don’t have that request because they are strangers to the public. My mission is to bring Marilyn and what is there to life inside.
