Writer Lawrence Grobel talks to Sally Field about the film she stars in, Soapdish, the film she produced for Julia Roberts, Dying Young, and the secret of her success: "Talent."
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Sally Field answers the door to her rented house on a quiet street in Santa Monica with her three-year-old Sam, still in pajamas, trailing behind her. Her own house in Brentwood is undergoing renovation. "It started just with the kitchen," she says, "but you know where that leads." Still, she and her husband, producer Alan Greisman, have managed to settle in nicely in their temporary home. Sally's even moved her acting awards to the mantle of her current living room--all 13 of them. There are her two Oscars for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, her two Golden Globes, two American Movie Awards for Favorite Female Star, an Actors Studio Award, a 1976-77 television Emmy for her performance in "Sybil," the U.S. Film Distributors Top. Box-Office Award (1981), the 1982 People's Choice Award, the National Association of Theater Owner's Star of the Year Award, a Women in Film Crystal Award (1986), and the 1986 Hasty Pudding Award from Harvard University.
I interviewed Sally back in 1986, for Playboy, but then we had a few days to get to know each other. This time we've only got a few hours because she's promised Sam she'd take him to Disneyland in the afternoon and the child is not about to let her renege on that promise. In fact, he's not sure he even wants her to begin our conversation. When she suggests he go to his room and take a nap before their trip, he says he'd rather stay next to her on the couch. But once we start talking, Sam remembers he has a question of his own to ask her. "What do animals in the zoo eat?" he wants to know. Sally tries to reason with him: if he doesn't let her do this interview, she won't be able to take him to Disneyland. But Sam really wants to know and Sally looks exasperated.
"What," she asks, "all animals? I'll tell you one. A zebra. It eats hay. Okay?"
"What does a lion eat?" Sam says, smiling coyly now.
"Meat," Sally says.
"Is that all?"
"And water. Meat and water."
Sam is about to ask about another animal but Sally cuts him off. "This isn't going to work," she says to him. "I want you to go upstairs and take a rest. You can look at books if you can't sleep." When Sam begins to whine, Sally picks him up and carries him upstairs to his room. That's when Sam starts to really cry. Not shy tears. A full-blown temper tantrum.
Sally comes down by herself and we try to begin, but her mind isn't there. "Just another minute," she says. "Let me try one more time." She runs up to Sam and manages to quiet him. It takes 15 minutes. Then she comes down and the doorbell rings. It's the TV repairman, who tells her he's fixed her cable wires, but the power ground is not right and if there's rain her TV could blow up. He suggests she call the company to have it fixed, then he recognizes her and asks for an autograph. She tries to tell him she's busy but realizes it's easier to just sign. When she finally sits down, she looks her age. She's 44.
Field has been acting since she was a teenager. It's still possible to catch the early Sally Field on cable in her first TV series as "Gidget." And once in a while you can even find a rerun of Sally as "The Flying Nun." It wasn't until she played the schizoid "Sybil" that she got recognized as a serious and truly talented actress, and established the basis for what would turn into an enduring movie career.
Her breakthrough film was Stay Hungry, which co-starred unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger. She then did a few of her boyfriend Burt Reynolds's pictures, like Smokey and the Bandit and The End. She made Heroes with Henry Winkler, Norma Rae (her first Oscar) for director Martin Ritt, Absence of Malice with Paul Newman. She also appeared in less well-known films like Back Roads, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, and Kiss Me Goodbye. Then came her second Oscar-winning performance in Places in the Heart, where she immortalized herself at the awards ceremony by standing before a TV audience of perhaps a billion people and sobbing, "You like me. You really like me!"
But in spite of becoming fodder for late-night TV talk show jokes, Sally Field continued to grow. Her second marriage, to producer Alan Greisman, flourished (her first marriage to her childhood boyfriend produced two sons, both in college now), as did her production company. She produced two films in which she starred, Murphy's Romance with James Garner, and Punchline with Tom Hanks. She acted in Steel Magnolias, where she was instrumental in discovering Julia Roberts, and she is currently starring in Soapdish with another old boyfriend, Kevin Kline. But what makes her especially interesting is that instead of focusing exclusively on projects she could produce and star in herself, she found a property that called for a young actress and got Julia Roberts to do it. In fact, in developing and producing Dying Young, she set her sights on Julia before the rest of the world did. So, people are now pointing out that Sally Field has figured out how best to survive in this business--and they're right.
In talking about producing her own last film, Demi Moore recently said that Sally Field was one of her role models. Her "courage and strength and feistiness paved the way for others," according to Moore.
But don't count Field out as an actress. Her inspirations are Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Barbara Stanwyck, and her talent is such that she will probably have the same kind of long, long career on-screen as those formidable women.
Lawrence Grobel: The interview we did for Playboy showed you as a pretty tough, self-assertive, determined woman--yet the image you still seem to have is somewhat more doe-eyed and simplistic. How do you think you're perceived?
Sally Field: I'm probably still perceived of as rather normal, as wholesome.
LG: And how do you perceive yourself?
SF: As a working mother, basically. I'm a professional and I'm good at what I do and I have three children and a husband and a house that's under reconstruction. And I'm sort of maintaining, keeping all the balls in the air as best I can.
LG: With all your juggling, what's the toughest ball to keep in the air?
SF: Probably just putting it all together. When it comes to acting, I'm good at that. But I'd like to be tested a little more. And When I'm doing it all-- acting, producing, dealing with Sam, the kids, the house-then I want to shoot myself.
LG: Do you still prefer to act, go home and hide rather than deal with people?
SF: I'd still prefer doing that, but I can't. But I do have strong feelings of wanting to run away.
LG: The word that keeps cropping up in articles about you is survivor. Is that how you see yourself?
SF: It's a word that underestimates why I'm here. I don't think I'm here because I have the ability to keep my head above the water. I can survive in a storm. I'm here because I have talent.
LG: Does the word bother you?
SF: I don't care if they're calling me a survivor or cute or spunky or All-American. All I care about is that I have a role that I want to do this year.
LG: Since we last talked, a lot has happened to you: you produced and starred in Punch-line, had a child at the age of 41, made three other pictures, and you're now producing Julia Roberts's next film. Your "tentative" relationship with your husband has proved to be solid, your two older sons are now in college, and you were involved in a terrifying plane accident. How much has all of this changed you?
SF: You know, everything changes so gradually that it's hard to remember where you were five minutes or five years ago. It's not like, BAM! there's this huge change. That happened twice in my life: when I first began, when "Gidget" went on the air, there was a real profound difference from Sunday to Monday and I had to cope with how different things were. And then when "Sybil" went on the air, there was this profound difference in how I was treated and how people looked at me. But now I find that everything happens so gradually. Life goes on and things change, but you don't realize it.
LG: What about your creative self--are you satisfied with the way your career is going?
SF: I don't think a person should ever be satisfied. I never feel, great, I think I'll go take a year off, sit on the back porch and knit. I never feel that I've made it. Or that I am where I want to be.
LG: Do you know where you want to be?
SF: No. [Laughs] It's not like there's this place where I'll know when I've arrived. It's a feeling that's always there. Probably all actors who stay successful for a length of time have some degree of it. You talk to a lot of actors. Does Al Pacino feel happy with where he is? They don't. You just go, when am I going to get there? When can I get to it? Where's the work? And it's always gnawing at you.
LG: Do you feel that you never have enough, that you always want more?
SF: Yeah, I definitely have that. But not like I want more jewelry, more houses, more money. I'm never looking for that. It has something to do with adventure, because acting to me is an adventure, it's a never-ending hunger. Also, as my life gets older and I get braver in the world I think I'd also like to travel and see things, to live fully. Like going to Tibet like Goldie [Hawn] does. Goldie's always had the ability to act out on those things. She's an adventurer in that way. My adventures have remained in one area, and that was always my work.
LG: Your latest work, Soapdish, is an adventure into new, comic territory for you. Was the high-strung TV soap opera queen you play any-thing like the person you are when you're at home after a bad day and your temper's flying?
SF: Part of her is an imitation of myself. I try to be more rational than she is, but I'm kind of a volcanic personality, I am emotional. There's a side of me that, if I let go, is that crabby and put-upon.
LG: You let it all hang out in this picture--your makeup is smeared, you look your age. Do you ever worry about playing older than you are?
SF: No. The only thing that matters is the role, the picture, and how do I feel being in it? Because it's always been, to me, about acting, not about my ego. There are starting to be more and more roles for women in their forties and so I will continue to be my age. I would be very frightened if I thought I had to pretend I was something that I wasn't. If I had to pretend I wasn't in my forties, I'd be terrified. But also, this is a different era and we don't know where it's going. We don't know what women are going to be allowed to do. Shirley MacLaine is a really good example of someone who is just walking the point. It's very new territory. Used to be that when female stars started to get older they'd try to dress them down and make them look younger and it got really awful, humiliating, and embarrassing. It happened to Doris Day and a lot of other really commercial box-office people, rather than just seeing if there were films for them as older people.
LG: Your husband, Alan Greisman, is a co-producer of Soapdish. Was he easy to work with?
SF: I really loved working with him. It made everything so much easier.
LG: Does he tell you what's going on to promote the film from a business angle?
SF: He doesn't tell me any-thing. They are working and negotiating now on publicity things, things that, as the producer of the picture, he would like me to do, but he's dealing with my publicist, Pat Kingsley, instead of with me. He knows enough now to never bring that home and talk to me about that.
LG: You used to go out with Kevin Kline, who plays your old lover in the picture. Was there any jealousy or tension between you and Alan during your romantic scenes with Kevin?
SF: I don't think so. Which seems strange to me. Alan liked the work, so he was tickled by it all. It's kind of funny stuff, it's not like real unbridled passion.
LG: Did it stir any old feelings that you had for Kline?
SF: No. We saw each other for a while. I adored him then and I adore him now. He was so much fun to work with.
LG: Did making this film remind you of your early TV days with "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun"?
SF: Not really, because this one is really a cartoon.
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.
LG: With all these feelings, I hope you still keep a journal.
SF: I do, but it's sporadic. When I'm working it's almost every day, but when I'm not and life's going on, I tend not to write in it as much.
LG: Ever think you'll publish any of it?
SF: When I was moving into this rented house one of my volumes fell out of a box and I sat down and flipped through it. I thought I was going to be blown away at the revelation as to who I was and I was so embarrassed because everything was misspelled and sophomoric. Now, granted, I picked up one of the very early volumes, but nonetheless! My older son Peter was just accepted into the master's writing program at Iowa, so I think all my fantasies about ever writing just left. I see his work and how concentrated and dedicated he is. He works so hard on knowing where to put commas and I think maybe I'm not meant to write.
LG: Do you think any image of you as insecure and doubtful stems from your acceptance remark for your second Oscar, when you told the world 'You like me, you really like me'?
SF: It's a fine line between really understanding what I meant. People have interpreted that in a way in which they can under-stand with their own words. And they often will interpret that feeling as insecurity when really it isn't. It's a very different thing than insecurity when you receive an Oscar and stand up there and go, 'Oh my God, I can't believe you actually like me.' My work worked for this one moment in time. And it isn't insecurity behind that at all. Have you ever had a standing ovation from your peers? If you do, you will be overcome with a feeling that at this one moment in time, I did it! An impossible task. All the odds, all the struggle to stay in the business, to get the work, to do it, to be right, to be good, at the right place at the right time, to commit yourself, to have it work! That's what it's about.
LG: Do you have any doubts about being liked today?
SF: I think I have a general respect factor now, even if people don't really like my work, they sort of respect me. So I don't feel like I'm fighting that.
LG: Let's talk about another kind of struggle: relationships. You said that you've never seen a relationship with any longevity that wasn't horrible. Your marriage is still together, do you still feel that way?
SF: Does going on seven years mean longevity? Longevity to me is like 20 years, 30 years. But I have what is a really great, quite spectacular husband. He's a real worker and he's really in it with me. He's never-endingly amazing to me. He's redefining a lot of me and certainly a lot of my images of men. Sorry guys.
LG: Do you still like men better than women?
SF: No, that's changed over the last five years as I've become closer to women.
LG: You once told me: "I know much more about myself as an actor than I do as a partner to a man. I've just started to learn about that."
SF: I still feel I know more about acting than I do about men. But I'm learning and getting better. I'm just so grateful that I have this person who will work with me, so I don't feel I'm in it by myself.
LG: Do you think many people know how much you like to swear?
SF: Those who know me do. [Laughs] I do, I do like to swear. It's just so much fun.
LG: You also like to be exhibited by a man in some ways, like an object. Can you talk about that part of you?
SF: I don't know if it's in every woman but it's in most women who were raised in the era that I was raised in. It feels great whenever I feel like a sex object. Maybe because it's pretty much of an oddity in my life. Probably women who had that as a burden in their lives don't feel that at all. But I've had so little of it that I think it's fun.
LG: You actually grew up feeling sex was a completely useless event. You hated it. Has that changed?
SF: That was in the early years of my first marriage. I was really very repressed, and then I was very Sybilesque--I would bust loose and be somebody else for a while. Then I would go back to my repressed state. The repression part I left off in my twenties, which was all about getting rid of that sort of cage that I put myself in emotionally.
LG: Part of that cage had to do with how your stepfather Jock Mahoney treated you--often throwing you from one side of the yard to the other. You spoke of going apeshit, fighting with him-- changing from a sweet, helpless being into Godzilla when you were 15, 16. Are you still emotionally scarred from those years?
SF: I still have to get over some of the things that I feel when I get to that because I was terrified of my stepfather and it hurt emotionally so deeply, those fights, they were just so painful. Sometimes if I get into a huge argument at a studio I have to keep saying to myself, 'This is not my stepfather, this is not my step-father....' Because the same pains start coming up.
LG: Do you still feel that you would have given anything to have been able to pick him up and throw him across the yard, as he would do with you?
SF: No. Even if I could have picked him up and thrown him across the yard, it wouldn't have made the pain go away. Not when you believe you have been so unfairly accused all the time. That rage remains.
LG: When we first talked, you were hesitant to say negative things about your real father, with whom you felt you never had a relationship, because you feared he might read it. Has anything changed there?
SF: I've actually reconnected with my father and that's sort of changed my life a lot. He's had a stroke and he's very ill now but I feel very close to him. Right now I wish I could say something that I could give to him to read, because he needs it right now. So I wish I could say something to you that you'd write and I could take it to him on his wall there and all the nurses and everybody around could see it, so he could feel... glad.
LG: Is he capable of understanding?
SF: Yeah. He just can't speak. I talk to him every day. He doesn't talk back. But unless you say something great I don't want him to see anything that might be hurtful to him right now.
LG: There's nothing I can say, it's up to you.
SF: [Pauses. Thinks. Is quiet]
LG: What about your mother, is she still your best friend?
SF: We're still very close, yeah.
LG: She said that your great ambition was to do a Broadway musical.
SF: Actually, in the bottom of my heart I would love to do that more than anything. But they don't do many Broadway musicals and I can't sing.
LG: She must have had quite a scare when you and your family were involved in a small plane accident in Aspen three years ago. How frightening was that?
SF: It was really scary and I don't think I've quite recovered from it.
LG: Your plane never took off but collided into two other planes. Did you think you were going to die?
SF: I didn't really think about it. It seemed like forever when we were just barreling around out of control. All I could think about was holding onto Sam. I wasn't screaming, I was just trying to hunker down and get into a position that I could brace my legs so that I could keep him safe.
LG: Did you get injured at all?
SF: No. I had bruises on my rib cage from the seat belt, that's all.
LG: Okay, last questions. You and CAA head Michael Ovitz went to high school together. Were you friends?
SF: I knew him. I was half a year ahead of him so it separated us a little bit. Then I knew him when he was a young, young agent. Then he called me when he separated and started CAA and asked would I come and be a client because I was a high school friend. At the time I said no. But then I went with him a couple of years after that.
LG: Did you see in him the kind of power he was to become?
SF: Honestly? No, I didn't see it. I see a different side of Michael than anybody except his wife, Judy. One good thing about Michael, he has close friends that he keeps from high school and college, so it really keeps him the old Michael. I know how powerful and how quite genius-like he is at certain business aspects, but I still just see the young kid in high school. And he relates to me like that: 'I can't believe what you've done, I'm so proud of you.' So it's nice.
LG: In the '80s you were involved in the anti-nuclear movement. Are you still involved today?
SF: Not so much anymore. It's not as weighty a problem as it used to be. Now it's recognized for being as weighty as it is.
LG: Are there any other issues in which you're involved?
SF: I've been sort of laying back. I guess because there're so many people out there that I don't feel I'm really needed. But I think we're all environmentally involved, aren't we?
LG: Are there any actors you'd like to work with?
SF: The problem with me is there are very few people I wouldn't want to work with.
LG: Last time you mentioned Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, De Niro, Al Pacino.
SF: Oh yeah, that's good. I like that group. I think Al and I would be spectacular.
LG: What do you have coming up?
SF: We have tons of stuff in development. I don't know what my next project is. I may never work again. [Laughs]
LG: A lot of movie actresses like Glenn Close, Ellen Burstyn, Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Lange, Jill Clayburgh, Ann-Margret, Anne Bancroft are doing TV. You've busted your ass to move from TV to movies--do you think you will one day return to TV?
SF: Sure, if something wonderful came to me, I would definitely do it.
LG: Finally, how do you feel about the movie business today?
SF: I think it's the best and the worst... and... just mine.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Steven Seagal for our April issue.