NEWSSally Field Thought She Would 'Pass Out' Before First Date With A-Lister Burt Reynolds: 'I Was So Nervous'
Sally Field opened up about her first date with Burt Reynolds.
June 15 2026, Published 12:36 p.m. ET
Oscar winner Sally Field confessed that she almost "passed out" before her first date with Boogie Nights star Burt Reynolds.
"I was so nervous, I thought I would pass out," Field recalled on the June 11 episode of the podcast "Talking Pictures." "I hadn't really ever been on any dates. I started when I was 18 in television and the whole world of that ilk was swept away from me."
Reynold had become a fan of Field during her breakout television show Gidget, prompting him to scope Field out to appear alongside him in the 1977 movie Smokey and the Bandit.
Sally Field said she almost 'passed out' when meeting Burt Reynolds for a date.
"It Was All a Blur'
Sally Field opened up about her relationship with Burt Reynolds on the 'Talking Pictures' podcast.
"I got this phone call, and it was from Burt Reynolds, and he wanted me to do this film, and the script was really, really bad, he said. And it was really, really bad," Field joked. "I was so shocked that he would call me."
The 79-year-old recalled that Reynolds' bodyguard had to greet her at the door that night instead of the famed A-lister.
"I just was nervous. It was all a blur," she continued. "Like, what was I doing there? I didn't know. I had learned how to be an actor, but I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to be that girl."
Sally Field recalled her relationship being 'incredibly complicated.'
Field and Reynolds ended up dating for five years, from 1976 to 1981, and costarring in four movies together.
Their shared films included Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II, Hooper and The End.
Reynolds died in 2018 at the age of 81 due to cardiac arrest. Field has spoken out in the past about their "tumultuous" relationship as young Hollywood starlets.
"Burt was a wonderful, but incredibly complicated character, who was very much like my stepfather that I grew up with," she said. "And I had a really tumultuous relationship with my stepfather. He frightened me and he tormented me, and yet, I worshiped him."
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'He Wanted to Control Me'
Sally Field and Burt Reynolds starred in four movies together throughout their relationship.
According to Field, Reynolds was against the actress appearing in the 1979 movie, Norma Rae, which won her her first Oscar in 1980.
He called Field's character, based on labor activist Crystal Lee Sutton, a "w----"
"He threw the script at me," she said. "He wanted to control me, and because I was standing up [to him], he said, 'Boy, you're letting this get the better of you.' And I said, 'This is the better of me.'"
Burt Reynolds died in 2018 at 81 years old.
In David Krager's 2024 book, 50 Oscar Nights, Field claimed that Reynolds had no interest in attending the 52nd Academy Awards as her date.
"He really was not a nice guy around me then," she revealed, according to People. "He did not want me to go to Cannes [Film Festival] at all. He said, ‘You don’t think you’re going to win anything, do you?’”
After splitting from Reynolds in the early 1980s, Field went on to marry film producer Alan Greisman in 1984.
