﻿During his heyday as a ‘70s Hollywood heartthrob, Burt Reynolds had a love life
that was even more tumultuous than his steamy exploits on screen. But there was only one
woman he carried a torch for that burned bright until the very end and that was Sally Field.
Together the pair were one of the most popular Hollywood couples in the 1970s.
Sadly, it all ended with trauma, heartbreak and scandal. Stay tuned, Juicers, today we are going
to take a deep dive into the heart-breaking story between Sally Field & Burt Reynolds.
Sally Field is well-known for her roles in Steel Magnolias, Mrs. Doubtfire and
Forrest Gump. How could we ever forget how she famously proclaimed, “I can’t deny the fact that
you like me, right now, you like me!” while accepting her Oscar for Places in the Heart.
She has remained a wholesome American star, while also revealing certain things that are
heartbreakingly in line with what it meant to be a woman, especially a woman in Hollywood.
Burt and Sally met in 1977 on the set of the hit movie Smokey and the Bandit and
dated for nearly five years. At the time, it seemed the pair were a match made in heaven,
with a relationship many longed to have. Field later revealed that their romance
wasn’t the fairy-tale many believed it to be. Before they met, both Field and Reynolds were
married and divorced. Sally had been married to her high school sweetheart,
Steven Craig for 7 years and had two sons with him. Reynolds had married Judy Carne,
and their union only lasted 2 years. Reynolds was taken with the fresh-faced
31-year-old star and he fought to get Sally cast in Smoky and the Bandit. “I wanted her really bad,
but the filmmakers said, ‘Well, she’s not sexy,’” he recalled. “And I said, ‘You don’t get it,
talent is sexy.’ And she’s got that.” Once on set, sparks flew fast and furious.
Reynolds wrote in his 2015 memoir, But Enough About Me. “If ever the
old cliché ‘chemistry’ applied … I mean, the sexual tension was bouncing off the walls!”
Sally said she was initially drawn to Burt’s swagger and charisma, and described their
connection as immediate and intense. “We had known each other about three days,
four days at that point during the filming of Smokey and the Bandit. It was instantaneous,
and four days felt like four years,” Sally said in a Good Morning America interview.
But that connection didn’t come without a cost. It wasn’t until almost 40 years later that she
opened up about her relationship with Burt. She spoke about how it was a really complicated and
hurtful relationship, even though there was a lot of love and care involved. It included him
not wanting her to attend the 1977 Emmys when she ended up winning for her role in Sybil.
She described the actor as controlling and distant. By the time they met, the weight
of his stardom had become a way for Reynolds to control everyone around him. And from the
moment she came into the picture, it was a way to control her too. She believes they were a perfect
match of flaws, and she blindly fell into a rut that had been formed in her childhood.
Sally first spoke publicly in 2012 about the sexual abuse she suffered at the
hands of her stepfather, Jock Mahoney, a stuntman and actor who went by Jocko.
Sally believes that her childhood affected her relationships with men later on, and that included
Burt. She felt as though she was trapped in an old pattern of behavior because she was predisposed.
He became a preformed rut from her past and she didn’t know how to get out of it. “I was somehow
exorcizing something that needed to be exorcized. I was trying to make it work this time,” she
said about her relationship with Reynolds. The relationship between Reynolds and Field
was one full of lust, co-dependency and blind love. He made her feel sexy, and she wanted
to be everything he had ever wanted. “You can see it in our faces. We were deeply entangled.
There was some ingredient between us having to do with my care-taking and him needing to be taken
care of,” she told Diane Sawyer in an interview. It all took a toll on Sally’s sense of self.
She felt as though she stopped existing. She dressed for him, looked for him, walked for him.
The actress disappeared and just became Burt Reynold’s girlfriend instead of Sally Field.
The couple never moved in together, but throughout their relationship Burt apparently proposed to
Sally several times. She spoke about why she never accepted saying, “He asked me to marry
him many times, but I knew his heart wasn’t in it. We’d have ended up just feeling terrible."
Reynolds also openly longed to start a family with Field. He wanted a child so badly that he ached
but he had an incredible fear of it too. His fear eventually won and after their split, he returned
to his womanizing ways and Field was devastated. Burt had a history of cheating on his past
girlfriends and ex-wife. While Reynolds made no apologies for sneaking around behind his exes
backs and his future ex-wife’s back, he never forgave himself for his shameful behavior with
Field. “After we broke up, I wanted to see her again, but she refused and I fell apart.
I wish I could turn back the clock,” he wrote in his memoir.
After their split, Sally rebounded quickly and two-years after her break-up with Burt,
she married producer Alan Greisman in 1984. They had one son together. The pair ultimately parted
ways in 1994. Burt moved on too and in 1988 he married Loni Anderson and they had a child.
It was a union that would eventually implode with accusations of physical abuse and drug
abuse on Burt’s part and cheating on both parts. The pair also divorced in 1994.
Looking back on her break-up with Burt, it was an era of change for Sally. She still sees her
time with him was a transformative point in her life. She spoke about it by saying, “I've always
thought of him rather nostalgically. He was a very important part of my life, but for a tiny little
part of my life. But it was so hugely important in my own existence, my own movement as a person.”
Though they both ultimately moved on with other people, Burt’s feelings for Sally never faded.
It was more than 30 years after their relationship and he still saw the split
as his biggest disappointment. He admitted, “Even now, it’s hard on me. I don’t know
why I was so stupid. Men are like that, you know. You find the perfect person, and then
you do everything you can to screw it up.” He always regretted that he never made the
relationship with Sally work, and always wondered how she felt. “That sense of loss never goes away.
I have no idea what Sally thinks about it. She could pick up the phone and speak to me but she
never does … Maybe she’ll phone me one day. I’d love to have that conversation,” he reflected.
Sadly, they never did. Burt died at 82 from a heart attack in 2018. After his passing,
she was one of the first to make a touching tribute to her ex. She spoke to how he was
the most important influence in her life during a formative stage in her career.
Burt, sadly, died with regrets about his relationship with Sally, and she still
regrets not having one last conversation with him. This couple has a devastating story that
is filled with undying love that lasted until the very end for Burt Reynolds. Sally Field
opened up to the world about her past trauma’s but she doesn’t let it define her, instead she
is a strong woman because of them today. Sally wrote a memoir titled In Pieces.
Burt passed on September 6th 2018 mere days before her memoir was on the shelves on September 18th.
In interviews promoting the book, she admitted that she was glad he would never get the chance
to read it or ask questions about the parts of her memoir that recounted their time as a couple. She
was pleased he couldn’t read about how trapped she felt in a relationship with him because he
still died saying she was the love of his life. Sally was glad he wouldn’t have to defend himself
or lash out because he probably would have. “I did not want to hurt him any further,” she said.