Sally Field

Sally Field is an American actress whose six-decade career has produced multiple defining American film and TV roles — particularly her two Best Actress Academy Awards (1980 for Norma Rae; 1985 for Places in the Heart) and her 2006–2011 lead role on ABC's TV series Brothers & Sisters. She was born Sally Margaret Field on November 6, 1946, in Pasadena, California, into an American show-business family. Her father Richard Dryden Field was an army officer, and her mother Margaret Morlan was an American actress. Her parents divorced when Sally was four, after which her mother raised her.

Her education at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California (1960–1964) launched her early-career path. Her 1965 first TV appearance — at age 18 — as the lead character Frances "Gidget" Lawrence on ABC's sitcom TV series Gidget launched her early-career American TV public profile.

Her 1967–1970 lead role as Sister Bertrille on ABC's sitcom TV series The Flying Nun launched her late-1960s American TV-sitcom public profile. The series ran for 82 episodes across three seasons.

Her 1979 lead role as Norma Rae Webster in Martin Ritt's Norma Rae — the textile-mill-worker-and-union-activism drama based on the real-life 1973 J.P. Stevens & Co. textile-mill labor-organizing campaign in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina — won her the 1980 Best Actress Academy Award. Her 1984 lead role as Edna Spalding in Robert Benton's Places in the Heart won her the 1985 Best Actress Academy Award. Her March 25, 1985 Academy Awards acceptance speech (across which she said "I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect... I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now you like me!") — produced her 1980s American Hollywood public profile. Her subsequent film career has produced multiple defining American films — particularly Steel Magnolias (1989), Forrest Gump (1994, in which she played the title character's mother), and Lincoln (2012, in which she played Mary Todd Lincoln). She married Steven Craig in 1968 (divorced 1975); she married Alan Greisman in 1984 (divorced 1994).

Her name Sally is the English diminutive of Sarah (from the Hebrew Sarah meaning "princess" or "lady"). Sally has been continuously among the most-popular American girls' names since 1880.