Sally Field Opens Up About Her Relationship With Burt Reynolds

Behind the Hollywood Romance That Never Healed

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field once represented one of Hollywood’s most irresistible couples.

Their chemistry in Smokey and the Bandit felt so natural that audiences easily imagined their romance continuing after the cameras stopped.

Yet the reality behind that glamorous image was far more complicated.

Decades later, their recollections revealed two dramatically different versions of the same relationship—a love story filled with passion, emotional pressure, career disagreements, and lasting regret.

When Reynolds first approached Field about Smokey and the Bandit, he was already one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Deliverance had elevated him to another level, while his famous 1972 Cosmopolitan centerfold had transformed him into one of America’s defining masculine icons.

Field, meanwhile, was working to move beyond her television image and establish herself as a serious dramatic actress.

Reynolds personally believed she was perfect for the female lead in Smokey and the Bandit.

Although she initially hesitated, she ultimately accepted.

The decision changed both careers.

Released in 1977, Smokey and the Bandit became a phenomenal commercial success, ranking as the second-highest-grossing film in North America that year behind Star Wars.

Reynolds and Field quickly became a beloved screen pairing, eventually appearing together in four films.

But their relationship was no longer confined to movie sets.

They fell in love in real life, beginning a romance that would become one of Hollywood’s most famous—and most misunderstood.

Field later revealed that Reynolds could be charming, funny, affectionate, and intensely loving.

Yet she also remembered another side of him: controlling, jealous, and frightening.

She said his behavior sometimes reminded her of the abusive stepfather she had experienced during childhood.

The comparison did not mean she believed the men were identical, but it reflected the complicated emotional response Reynolds could provoke in her.

The deepest conflict emerged when Field received the script for Norma Rae.

The role offered her something vastly different from the lighthearted romantic characters she had played opposite Reynolds.

It was a demanding dramatic performance about a factory worker fighting for labor rights, and it ultimately became one of the most important opportunities of Field’s career.

Reynolds strongly opposed her decision to accept it.

Field later recalled that he criticized the character and attempted to persuade her not to take the part.

To Field, his reaction represented something larger: a pattern in which Reynolds believed he knew what was best for her.

She ignored him.

Norma Rae became a critical triumph, and Field’s performance earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1980.

Reynolds did not attend the ceremony with her.

Field later remembered the period around the Oscars as a decisive moment in the collapse of their relationship.

Their romance ended, but Reynolds never seemed to completely let go of the memory.

Years later, he repeatedly described Field as the love of his life and called losing her one of the greatest mistakes he had ever made.

To the public, the statement sounded like the confession of a man haunted by the woman who had escaped him.

Field saw it differently.

She eventually rejected the idea that Reynolds had accurately described their relationship.

She believed he had created a romantic narrative that was more comforting than the truth.

Their time together had contained beautiful memories, but she also remembered emotional pain and said Reynolds had not been good for her.

While their relationship was deteriorating, Reynolds himself was entering the greatest professional period of his life.

For five consecutive years beginning in 1978, he ranked as the industry’s number-one box-office star.

He commanded enormous salaries, sometimes earning around $10 million per picture, and became synonymous with action comedies such as The Cannonball Run and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

His lifestyle reflected that extraordinary success.

He owned expensive properties, aircraft, customized automobiles, and the sprawling Valhalla Ranch in Florida, where he reportedly kept a large number of horses.

Then the image began to crack.

During the filming of City Heat in 1984, Reynolds suffered a severe facial injury when a metal chair struck him.

The resulting pain became chronic, while difficulties eating contributed to dramatic weight loss.

Rumors about his health spread, including false speculation that he had AIDS.

Pain medication became another problem.

Reynolds eventually acknowledged a serious dependence on morphine and other drugs, at one point taking an extraordinary number of pills each day.

Addiction became a battle that would follow him for years.

His finances suffered as well.

Business ventures failed, his investments produced heavy losses, and debts accumulated.

In 1996, Reynolds filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The man who had once represented Hollywood wealth was suddenly struggling under millions of dollars in debt.

His marriage to Loni Anderson also collapsed publicly.

The couple married in 1988 and adopted a son, but their relationship later became consumed by accusations, financial disputes, and a highly publicized divorce.

Yet Reynolds refused to disappear.

His career experienced an extraordinary second act when he appeared in Boogie Nights as Jack Horner.

The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and reminded audiences that the charismatic star possessed serious acting ability beneath the familiar persona.

He continued working despite deteriorating health, financial difficulties, and the burdens of aging.

Even near the end of his life, he remained connected to Hollywood and was cast by Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, although he died before the project could be completed with him.

On September 6, 2018, Reynolds died in Florida at the age of 82 from a heart attack associated with coronary artery disease.

The reaction was immediate, but perhaps the most poignant response came from Sally Field.

She acknowledged that the years they had shared would remain with her forever and offered a brief farewell: “Rest, buddy.”

Twelve days later, her memoir In Pieces appeared, providing an even more complicated portrait of their relationship.

Field did not erase the affection, chemistry, or unforgettable memories.

But neither did she allow nostalgia to rewrite the pain.

That distinction may be the most revealing part of their story.

Reynolds spent his final years remembering Field as the woman who got away.

Field remembered a relationship that had contained both extraordinary affection and profound emotional difficulty.

Neither perspective completely erased the other.

Their romance therefore survived in an unusual way.

It did not survive because they remained together.

It survived because their opposing memories demonstrated how differently two people can experience the same love.

Burt Reynolds became one of Hollywood’s greatest box-office stars, but his fame could not protect him from injury, addiction, financial ruin, failed relationships, and regret.

Sally Field ultimately built a career and identity that existed independently of the man who had once been her most famous romantic partner.

Their story remains powerful precisely because it was never as simple as the movies suggested.

On screen, Reynolds and Field looked effortless.

Off screen, they discovered that chemistry could not guarantee safety, success could not guarantee happiness, and love could not always overcome two incompatible versions of the future.

In the end, Reynolds continued to call Field the love of his life.

Field remembered him too—but refused to romanticize what that love had cost her.

That painful contradiction became the final truth of their legendary Hollywood romance: sometimes the person remembered as the one who got away is also the person someone was relieved to leave behind.