Sally Field reveals 'controlling' relationship with Burt Reynolds
Sally Field has revealed that Burt Reynolds was jealous and controlling over her during their five-year relationship.
In her new memoir, called In Pieces, she also hints that he may also have been physically aggressive towards her at times, saying that on the occasions that she would assert herself, he ‘tightened his grip, sometimes literally’.
Field starred with Reynolds in the movie Smokey and the Bandit in 1977, after which they began dating in what she describes as an ‘instantaneous and intense’ relationship.
“By the time we met, the weight of his stardom had become a way for Burt to control everyone around him, and from the moment I walked through the door, it was a way to control me. We were a perfect match of flaws,” she writes.
“Blindly I fell into a rut that had long ago formed in my road, a pre programmed behavior as if in some past I had pledged a soul-binding commitment to this man.”
If he found that she had met with another man in any capacity, ‘Burt would pinch my face in his hand, demanding I tell him who the guy was and what kind of relationship I’d had with him’.
“No matter who it was, if I knew him well or only barely, I’d lie with my heart racing as though I’d been caught at the dinner table with pink lips,” she went on.
During the filming of Smokey and the Bandit, Field writes that she also encountered his drug use at the time, and he would often use addictive painkillers like Percodan and sedatives like Valium.
“He was zooming the car down narrow roads, barely able to see around the forest of equipment and spouting reams of dialogue while I fed him barbiturates hand over fist. Clearly I didn’t have my wits about me,” she writes.
Field later recounts that Reynolds would try to belittle her career, and had tried to stop her taking the leading role in the movie Norma Rae in 1979, for which she later won an Oscar.
He also tried to get her to cancel a trip to the Cannes Film Festival the same year, in favour of house hunting with him, and during an argument branded it ‘a waste of time’ for her, lashing out: “You don’t expect to win anything, do you?”
She in fact won the award for Best Actress at the festival, and describes the experience of being away from Reynolds as making her feel ‘wondrously free’.
Fields describes Reynolds as a tortured soul who ‘couldn’t breathe’, and who was ‘engulfed… by his instant notoriety’.
Field said in a recent interview with the New York Times that she is ‘glad’ that Reynolds would not get to read the book, as it would have ‘hurt him’.
“I felt glad that he wasn’t going to read it, he wasn’t going to be asked about it, and he wasn’t going to have to defend himself or lash out, which he probably would have,” she said.
“I did not want to hurt him any further.”
Reynolds died earlier this month at the age of 82, following a heart attack.
Following news of his death, Field said: “There are times in your life that are so indelible, they never fade away. They stay alive, even forty years later.
“My years with Burt never leave my mind. He will be in my history and my heart, for as long as I live. Rest, Buddy.”
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