Burt Reynolds’s true love was not Sally Field.
Reynolds gave her that name in 2015, three years before he passed away. He gushed about how much he missed her and claimed that one of his greatest regrets in life was not making their romance, which started on the set of 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit, work.
The actress had a very different perspective.
In a recent interview with Variety, she declared, “He was not someone I could be around.” He was simply not a good fit for me.
About his public declarations, Field, 75, claimed Reynolds, who passed away at age 82 after suffering a heart attack, “I wasn’t the more significant person to him than he had imagined in his reimagining of things. He merely desired to own the thing he lacked. Simply put, I didn’t want to handle that.”
On September 18, 2018, exactly 12 days after Reynolds’s passing, Field published her memoir In Pieces, in which she wrote about their complex relationship. She recounted his drug use, alleging that he used barbiturates, Percodan, and Valium while filming Smokey and the Bandit, and that he was controlling and abusive. (Loni Anderson, Reynolds’ second wife, documented his drug usage in her autobiography and claimed that it caused him to physically abuse her.)
Reynolds and Field dated sporadically for five years while producing four films as a couple. Field stated in the book that she was sexually molested until she was 14 years old by her stuntman and actor stepfather, Jock Mahoney and that she attempted to replicate that relationship with Reynolds in retrospect. “She was exorcising something that required exorcising,” someone once said.
Field, who had two marriages that ended in divorce, made a kind statement following Reynolds’ passing. She didn’t go to his funeral, though.
Field, whose biography took her seven years to write, told Variety that she didn’t worry about writing so openly about her connection with Reynolds because she “didn’t think I was going to publish it.”
In the interview, Field discussed her lengthy career in Hollywood and how it “can really kick the feces out of you.” She is currently working on the road trip film 80 for Brady with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Rita Moreno.
