Sally Field
With In Pieces, Sally Field has delivered an amazingly rare thing: a memoir of growing up to become world-famous that isn't really, much about fame at all. It's about the search for love and acceptance, her devotion to her beloved mother and the damage of an abusive stepfather, the peculiarities of growing up in a 1950s show business family, and the high-wattage straitjacket of her early fame in the television roles of Gidget and The Flying Nun. It's about her quest, in her work with Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio, to find that moment of focused sharpness again, in films which would bring her Academy Awards for her roles in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. It's about the roadblocks – put up by directors, boyfriends, writers and others – thrown in the way of a woman determined to follow her own vision, and to put the pieces of her life together for herself. The result is eloquent, tough-minded, and as singular as the author's career. She joined us in the studio just before the publication of In Pieces, for an in depth conversation about this extraordinary book and her extraordinary life.