Inside the Actors Studio. Sally Field

Authors:James Lipton (Interviewer), Sally Field (Interviewee), Lou Del Prete (Producer), Jeff Wurtz (Director), Angelo Badalamenti (Composer), Actors Studio (New York, N.Y.), Bravo Cable Network, In the Moment Productions, Ltd

Summary:James Lipton hosts an evening of discussion with actor Sally Field. Field discusses her upbringing in California's San Fernando Valley, the daughter of actress Margaret Field and Richard Dryden Field, and the stepdaughter of stuntman Jock Mahoney. Field speaks about her childhood shyness, and her anger, which propelled her acting; her early forays into stage acting in junior high school; getting her start on television as a teenager in the mid-1960s sitcom series Gidget, from which she went on to star in popular television comedy The flying nun; and her training with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Field examines her roles in the 1976 motion picture Stay hungry, in the 1976 made-for-television movie Sybil, in Smokey and the bandit (1977), in Norma Rae (1979), in the 1984 motion picture Places in the heart, and in the 1989 Steel magnolias. The discussion is illustrated with clips from some of these works. Field speaks also about the difficulties of sustaining an emotion over several camera takes, and her deep desire as an actor "to be good." A brief question and answer session with Field and the Actors Studio master's degree students concludes the program