“My beloved Steven Spielberg has never left my life,” the 80 for Brady actress said at the 34th Palm Springs Film Awards on Thursday
Sally Field is getting candid about her lifelong friendship with Steven Spielberg.
In a speech introducing the The Fabelmans director and team for the Vanguard Award at the 34th Palm Springs Film Awards on Thursday, the 80 for Brady actress shared with the audience just how long she’s known the director – and how the pair almost went on a date .
“My newly acquired business manager wanted me to meet one of his clients and wanted me to go to Universal for a supposed ‘meeting’ because he thought the two of us would really hit it off,” Field began.
“And though we never actually went on a date together, my beloved Steven Spielberg has never left my life. For almost 50 years — is it really? — we have gone through this life that’s been filled with good and bad, the laughter and the angst,” she lovingly recalled. “He has been my biggest supporter and a constantly welcoming place.”
Although the two didn’t date, they’ve remained close friends for their entire lives. During her speech, Field also honored her friend’s incredible impact on filmmaking.
“I honestly can’t imagine my life without him at this point, but I can’t imagine our country, much less the industry, had Steven Spielberg never held a camera in his hands,” the 76-year-old Steel Magnolias actress said.
“His vision, his sense of humor and fun, of terror and entertainment, his humanity and heart have been woven into the whole world’s consciousness,” she added.
Spielberg isn’t the only Hollywood legend Field has talked about recently. In December, the actress spilled the tea on her worst on-screen kiss — and it involved “a lot of drooling.”
In an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, the Spoiler Alert star, 76, fielded an answer to a viewer’s question about her worst mouth-to-mouth encounter.
“Oh boy, shall I really name names here?” the actress wondered. “Okay, this is gonna be a shocker, hold on folks,” she said, before she quickly added, “Burt Reynolds.”
As the audience and fellow guest Idina Menzel laughed, Field dished a bit more about smooching the late actor, with whom she first starred in 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit.
“It was just not something he really did very well,” she said with a laugh. “I could go into detail, but you don’t want to hear it.”
But Cohen pressed, asking if she was speaking about “tongue,” to which Field responded, “No … just a lot of drooling was involved.
Field and Reynolds dated for five years in the late ’70s and early ’80s after meeting on Smokey and the Bandit and had a tumultuous relationship, as Field detailed in her 2018 memoir In Pieces, which came out days after Reynolds’ death at the age of 82.
