Sally Field reveals ex-boyfriend Burt Reynolds refused to attend the Academy Awards with her when she won her first Oscar: 'He really wasn't a nice guy around me at the time'

Sally Field won a major award at the 52nd Academy Awards in 1980 when she scored her first Oscar for her leading role in Norma Rae.

But the 77-year-old acting legend – who went on to win a second Academy Award – revealed her success on the awards circuit became a major bone of contention with her then-boyfriend Burt Reynolds.

Field reveals in Dave Karger's new book 50 Oscar Nights, which hits shelves January 23, that the Boogie Nights stars – who died in 2018 at the age of 82 – refused to attend the Oscars ceremony with her, and even tried to persuade her not to go to other events. prestigious ceremonies during her Norma Rae publicity campaign.

The actress, who last year revealed she almost went on a blind date with Steven Spielberg, painted a portrait of a jealous Reynolds who was “not happy” with the critical acclaim she received for Norma Rae.

“He really wasn't a nice guy around me at the time,” she said via People.

Field ultimately won the Oscar for Best Actress that year, but Reynolds skipped the show, so her boyfriend David Steinberg and his then-wife took her to the ceremony; saw it win her second Oscar in 1985

Before the 1980 Oscars, she said her Smokey And The Bandit costar told her he “had no intention” of going to the ceremony with her.

But Reynolds had been telegraphing for months about a perceived lack of support for his then-girlfriend's most critically acclaimed performance to date.

Directed by Martin Ritt, Norma Rae was set to premiere at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, but Reynolds urged her not to attend the prestigious festival.

“He didn't want me to go to Cannes at all,” Field told Karger. “He said, 'You don't think you're going to win anything, do you?'

Reynolds turned out to be disastrously wrong. The Cannes jury, which chooses award winners from films in competition without publishing a list of nominees, selected Field as the festival's best actress winner for her performance in Norma Rae.

However, the award didn't seem to mollify Reynolds at all, and “when the Oscars came around, he really wasn't a nice guy around me at the time and wouldn't come with me,” Field recalls.

However, she still had some support at the ceremony when comedian and actor David Steinberg and his then-wife Judy Marcione attended with her.

The Forrest Gump actress admitted she “didn't know what to do” about not having a date.

Before the 1980 Oscars, she said her Smokey And The Bandit costar told her he “had no intention” of going to the ceremony with her; seen in 1977

Reynolds also reportedly urged her to skip the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. He said, “You don't think you're going to win anything, do you?”'; still from Smokey And The Bandit

Field ultimately won the Best Actress award at the festival. She dated Reynolds from 1976 to 1980, but then they went on and off until 1982; still from Smokey And The Bandit

'Then David said, “Well, for God's sake, we'll take you.” He and Judy made it a big party,” she said. 'They picked me up in a limousine and drank champagne in the car. They just made it great fun.”

Field and Reynolds had begun dating in 1976, when they were filming the classic comedy Smokey And The Bandit, which was released the following year and became a huge hit and the second highest-grossing film of the year, after Star Wars .

The lovebirds worked together again on the 1978 films The End and Hooper, before recording their last on-screen collaboration, 1980's Smokey And The Bandit II.

However, pressure from Reynolds' disdain for Field's rising career appears to have soured things between the two, and they parted ways later in 1980.

However, it wasn't quite over for the two, and they continued dating on and off until 1982 before calling it quits for good.

The end of the relationship coincided with the beginning of a major downturn in Reynolds' career, who appeared in a series of flops in the mid-'80s, which only ended when he got the chance to show off his acting chops again. 1997 classic, Boogie Nights, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

The film earned the veteran star his first and only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for playing a porn director who fails to keep up with the rapidly changing industry of the late 1970s and early 1970s. eighties.

It offered Reynolds many new roles, but few meaty roles, and he turned down a role in Anderson's critically acclaimed follow-up film Magnolia.

Reynolds, who died in 2018 at the age of 82, fell into a career slump in the mid-1980s, briefly ended with his Oscar-nominated role in 1997's Boogie Nights. Field had decades of critically acclaimed performances and hit films; seen in February 2023 in LA

Field would win a second Oscar in 1985 for the previous year's Places In The Heart, and she later received a supporting actress nomination for playing Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's 2012 film Lincoln.

In her 2018 memoir In Pieces, Field revealed that she cut off contact with Reynolds a few years after their breakup and did not speak to him for the last thirty years of his life.

In the documentary I Am Burt Reynolds, filmmaker Adam Rifkin – who directed Reynolds in The Last Movie Star – said he questioned the Cannonball Run star about why he and Field split.

“I screwed up,” he said Reynolds told him. He also claimed that the Deliverance star said he wished he had married Field and started a family with her.