Sally Field found an unexpected way into Norma Rae‘s sexuality, she borrowed something from Patricia Neal.
Field said she was struggling during a romantic scene with Beau Bridges in the 1979 drama when director Martin Ritt stepped in with one highly specific note. Rather than asking her to make the moment more conventionally seductive, he pointed her toward a performance from one of his own earlier movies.
“The only thing I want you to do is think Patricia Neal in Hud,” Field recalled Ritt telling her in a new Criterion interview discussed by Entertainment Weekly. Field had already explained that “overt sexuality” did not come naturally to the kinds of characters she typically played.
Field remembered the actress as earthy and completely unselfconscious in the 1963 Western, someone who was not visibly trying to attract attention but nevertheless projected a powerful sensuality.
Martin Ritt Gave Field One Image to Work With
The moment came while Field and Bridges were filming a scene between Norma Rae and Sonny. After one take, Ritt approached Field and told her not to complicate the problem.
He wanted her to think about Neal’s performance as Alma Brown in Hud, the housekeeper whose grounded presence attracts Paul Newman’s Hud Bannon despite her refusal to perform femininity for his benefit.
“It was such a perfect image for me because she is so profoundly earthy in it”. The sensuality seemed to exist naturally within the character.
That gave Field a way to approach Norma Rae’s sexual history without constantly signaling it to the audience. Instead of “playing sexy,” she could allow the character’s sexuality to exist alongside her humor, toughness, frustration and everyday physicality.
The Role Was Already Creating Trouble With Burt Reynolds
The question of Norma Rae’s sexuality had already become a source of conflict in Field’s personal life before cameras rolled. Earlier this year, Field told People that Burt Reynolds, her partner at the time, did not want her to accept the role and reacted particularly strongly to the character’s sexual past.
“He threw the script at me,” Field recalled, adding that Reynolds used a derogatory term for Norma Rae and tried to discourage her from making the film.
Field took the role anyway and now describes that decision as part of a larger change in their relationship. “It was the beginning of me finding my legs,” she said. Reynolds also discouraged her from attending the movie’s Cannes premiere. Field went anyway.
Norma Rae screened in competition at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, where Field won the festival’s Best Actress award. She has recalled crying when the screening received a standing ovation that she remembered lasting roughly 10 minutes, particularly after years of fighting to move beyond the lighter television work that had defined her early career.
Patricia Neal Had Already Won an Oscar for Ritt
Neal won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Hud at the 1964 Oscars. The film received seven nominations and won three awards, including Neal’s performance prize, Melvyn Douglas’ supporting-actor Oscar and James Wong Howe’s black-and-white cinematography award.
Sixteen years later, Field won the same Best Actress category for Norma Rae at the 52nd Academy Awards. The role arrived after Field had spent years trying to escape the limitations Hollywood placed on her because of shows including Gidget and The Flying Nun. Her Emmy-winning performance in Sybil had already demonstrated that she could handle much darker material, but Norma Rae became another decisive shift in how the industry viewed her.