Sally Field: When Larry Met Sally

LG: Your last film, Not Without My Daughter, was the dark drama you wanted to do after Steel Magnolias, but it wasn't out there very long. Was it the victim of politics and bad timing?

SF: I don't think anybody knew whether it was going to be good or bad timing. It would have been much better if it had come out the way it was originally planned, in December rather than January 11th, because the war started a few days after it opened. I made it clear that I would have released it earlier. And the fear of terrorism was so high in this country--maybe this is rationalization, maybe whatever happened with the picture would have happened anyway. But people were afraid to go to the theater. There were a lot of bomb threats.

LG: Weren't there also threats against you?

SF: Yeah, I hate threats. But I don't even know if we should be talking about this because they say if you talk about it, it causes other crazies to... In the first week of the war everything was running pretty high, emotions everywhere. Were there going to be terrorist actions here in this country? I couldn't imagine that I would be high on the list of people they'd want to go after. But who knows?

LG: Is it true you had problems with the producers and even refused to appear with them at a press conference?

SF: I don't know about that, but specifically, regarding the producers of this picture, I wouldn't have had to be there with them. Nor would the director, nor would any of the other actors. Because the producers behaved abominably throughout the entire film. They were so unsupportive and just really bad people down to the core. They were two really rotten people and what they did to all of us there was staggering.

LG: You wouldn't want to go into specifics here, would you?

SF: I'd really rather not. I don't even want to give them the bad publicity of having their names in print.

LG: Speaking of the war, you supported the troops in the Persian Gulf. Did you also support the war?

SF: Yes, I did. There were a lot of my friends who didn't, but I thought if there is such a thing as a war that needed to be fought, this was it. I saw the war as being something we needed to do. I thought that Hussein had to be stopped. I honestly don't believe we went far enough.

LG: Your two sons are of draft age--if a draft was brought back, would you have encouraged them to go if called?

SF: It wouldn't have mattered whether I wanted them to or not. The boys and I talked about it and both Peter and Eli were going to definitely go if it came down to that. They were going to enlist.

LG: And you encouraged that?

SF: Yeah. I would have been horrified, frightened. I prayed to God every night that it wouldn't come down to that. I also think women should be drafted. I would have wanted to go and do something. We should all be responsible for the world.

LG: You're currently acting as producer for Julia Roberts's next film, Dying Young. How did that come about?

SF: It was a book that we heard about and we got it set up at Fox. I had developed Dying Young for Julia Roberts, and when I took it to Fox I told them about this little, unknown actress. 'No one knows her yet, but you will,' I said. This was before Steel Magnolias had come out. The studio didn't develop it with her in mind, but I always did. You see, I got to be in on the casting for Julia for the daughter in Steel Magnolias. I literally met all the young actresses in town and out of town. And when Julia came in I knew it was her. I said that to Ray Stark and Herbert Ross, that was the girl. When we finally had Dying Young ready and she read it, she was on location doing Sleeping With the Enemy, so a lot had happened to her since then.

LG: How lasting do you think her career will be?

SF: She's immensely trained, but I've come to believe that no one knows any of those things. It all depends on how much she wants it.

LG: A lot of young actresses, like Roberts, Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, talk pretty tough. Meg Ryan has called herself a tough cookie. "I know what I want and what I don't want," she said. "I have always been ambitious..." Do you feel that way?

SF: I've always been sure of myself when it comes to my work and acting, but never very ambitious, actually. I never have a clear focus on where I'm going.

LG: What about being a tough cookie?

SF: I'm not a tough cookie at all. I do what I have to do and then I battle when I have to battle, and then I come home and just absolutely fall apart. Maybe that makes me strong, maybe that makes me a tough cookie. Strong cookie, in any case. I'm out there in the business world maintaining and fighting the battles and doing whatever it is I have to do.

LG: Demi Moore says: "There are too many good actresses to fill the few great roles for women, so you have to go out there and fight." How cutthroat does it get?

SF: Not at all. I don't know a single actress that's cutthroat. Not one. I only know them to be unbelievably generous. Maybe there's things I don't know about and I'm being naive. I know there are some actresses working today whom I hear horror stories about their being unbelievable to work with...

LG: Like Faye Dunaway?

SF: No, I mean young, pretty ones...but that's just a very unhappy, unbalanced person.

LG: Which is what you were when you were younger. After "Gidget" you had 10 years of problems--eating disorders, confusion, loneliness. Can you talk about that time?

SF: I'm glad to be out of it. I just sometimes flash on that time and what it was like to be in it. I'm still addressing myself in some ways to it. I still sometimes hear the doorbell to that door, even though it doesn't really exist any longer. I still feel some of the same colors.

LG: Do you still see your therapist?

SF: Yes.

LG: You've talked about him helping you get through stages you don't understand. What's the last stage you didn't understand?

SF: I'm in it now. Having to do with what I want to do with myself now, how I feel in business and with what is power and what do you do with it? What do you want to do with it? Who's got it? And what it feels like to have it. Somehow, I'm trying to understand. I don't think it's easy for women to understand, though. Men take it for granted.

LG: How much power do you feel you have today?

SF: None. None. I don't feel I have any.

LG: That's not true.

SF: But I don't feel I have any.

LG: But you know you do.

SF: I don't know I do. Power is only about the project.

LG: If you are producing something, you have control. That's power.

SF: But you never have control in pictures. You have a voice perhaps, but I don't have control. There are some directors who have control. Scorsese has control. And that to me is power.

LG: Still, don't you feel a difference between yourself as an actor in Not Without My Daughter and as a producer in Dying Young?

SF: No, I don't feel any difference. I have more power in Not Without My Daughter in some ways because I'm acting in it. And I can say, 'No, we don't do that.' Producing is a whole other thing when you're not acting in it. Certainly I have a voice, a strong voice, but it's a director's medium.

LG: And do you have any desire to direct?

SF: I do have more and more of a desire to direct. I just don't know when or how or what.

LG: Those are three good reasons. How much of a hands-on producer are you?

SF: Very. Very.

LG: And yet you still don't feel powerful?

SF: It isn't a matter of feeling powerful. You feel tired.

LG: Is it at all as satisfying as acting?

SF: No. This isn't what people want to hear, I'm sure. To me, no. It's much more business. And compromise. And I don't want to produce that badly. I don't want to play all the games I see being played, and you have to be aware of the games. You lose sight of reality when you're acting. Some producing techniques seem immoral to me in a way. You get cut off from your own emotions, and I don't want that to happen to me, because then I wouldn't be of value to myself because I would lose the ability to act and turn into one of "them" and I don't want to be that.

LG: How much talent does it take to develop properties?

SF: A lot. Producing is very underestimated. It's like the low man on the totem pole as far as the Industry is concerned. Next comes writers, which is completely ridiculous. It is so frustrating and so tedious to be a producer, to find and develop things, to get the writers. It goes on and on. It takes such tenacity. Even I, who find myself to be tenacious, I want to go, 'Who cares!? Just throw the thing away! Give it up! Burn it!' I want instant gratification, which is what acting's about. But I've learned a lot and I'm in it, so there you go.

LG: Does it still wear you out to have lunches with producers, agents, writers, directors, and pretend to know what they're talking about?

SF: Oh, it's exhausting.

LG: Are you still pretending?

SF: Not so much now. I don't have to pretend. But I'm still worn out.

LG: When you first started your production company, you really didn't know what was expected of you, did you?

SF: No, I did not. I've been doing this now a long time, since Kiss Me Goodbye ten years ago. At that time they were giving everybody development deals and I had one. Not knowing what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I sat in a room, had a secretary. I kept saying, 'What are we doing? Where do all these things come from? How do I get them to come to me?' I always felt this sort of terror at the thought that I had taken this on because I have such an overblown sense of responsibility. It comes from my own make-up, feeling that I must be good, I must be diligent, I must be responsible, I can't be frivolous. And I didn't want to do this. I saw it being such a heavy bur-den. I talked to Jane Fonda, who was on the same lot. She told me how to proceed. I realized that I had to get someone to work with to do the things that I didn't want to do, to be actually the hands-on producer end of it originally. So I did that first one, Murphy's Romance, with Laura Ziskin.

LG: "When we're old and gray," you once told me, "Jane Fonda will be a woman of this time." Do you still feel that way about her?

SF: I don't know whether Jane will continue to be that because I don't think Jane wants to continue to be that. The burden of all that must have been really huge. But certainly in the '80s Jane was a very strong force. She helped change women all together. Jane is responsible for exercise. It may sound like a very silly thing, but it's been really huge for women to start to exercise. I didn't do it before Jane started to come out and be this guru, making it accessible to women after pregnancy, during pregnancy. And then the video tapes and all that. Before Jane brought all that out I know I didn't work out very often. It's changed women's attitudes about themselves--working out.

LG: It's interesting that now you're talking about Jane's influence on exercising when before you focused on Jane's influence in the movie business. "I see how different women are today in my business--so much of it has to do with the kind of woman Jane has been," you said.

SF: Well, I do mean that too. Jane was the first one really who had a working production company and she was responsible for the product that came out. She was extremely productive. But it's like the other side of Jane took over and got even more powerful than the acting part of her. Now I don't know what Jane wants to do. I hope she rests for a while.

LG: Five years ago you praised Meryl Streep's talents, saying you will never be her. Do you still feel that way?

SF: I think I never will be her. Not primarily because of the different accents she does or the complicated nature of the characters she's done. I think that my work...when I have the opportunity to do very complicated character acting, I think that they're pretty darn good. What I might have meant by that is that Meryl has a kind of baggage coming in that I can't even imitate. A kind of an aura about her. She's got a sophistication or air of intelligence, she seems that she's come from Vassar, you know? And I can act that, but I will never really have that royalty feeling about me. Meryl could easily play Anastasia. There is something regal about her. I could play my version of it, but it wouldn't be the first thing you thought about me when I came in the door.

LG: Is she the best actress of our generation?

SF: I don't think we know who is the best one. I don't think you do know when you're in it. You can only look back over time and over a career. Like now we can look back on the Jimmy Stewarts and Cary Grants and Marlon Brandos, the Barbara Stanwycks, Bette Davises, Katharine Hepburns. And even then you can't just say one was going away the best. Because Bette Davis gave us things that no other actress did, but so did Hepburn and so did Barbara Stanwyck.

LG: Two years ago you proclaimed yourself one of the five best actresses in America...

SF: Did I say that? Ah, yeah, I guess I did.

LG: Who are the others in that category?

SF: I hate to say that because I don't know! It changes so much. Anjelica Huston is mind-boggling. Joanne Woodward in Mr. & Mrs. Bridge was just magnificent. Last year I wouldn't have put Joanne in that category. So many of these lists have to do with what's going on this year.

LG: Are you still very competitive with other women?

SF: Yes, I feel very competitive with women. But I feel very competitive with men. I'm an extremely competitive person. I'm not ambitious as much as I am competitive.

LG: Even with a friend, like Goldie Hawn?

SF: Very much. And I talk to her about it. I always wish she would carry on like I do, but she handles her emotions differently. I feel things so strongly all the time, so I have to say all of it ad nauseam. So I tell her, but I do it funny. Like how she looks, or how her movie's doing, or how her new house is coming along. I get it out there. 'How come you have this and I have nothing, you have this great house and I don't even have a driveway!' [Laughs] I'm even afraid to go into her new house. I'm afraid I would go home and burn my house down.

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