Sally Field is an American two-time Academy Award-winning actress. She was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Maggie, an actress, and Richard Dryden Field, who worked in sales. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother subsequently remarried to actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney.

She attended Portola Middle School then Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California where she was a cheerleader. Among her classmates were famed financier Michael Milken, fellow actress Cindy Williams and Michael Ovitz of CAA and Walt Disney Studios fame.

Field got her start on television, as the boy-struck surfer girl in the mid-1960s surf culture sitcom series Gidget. She then went on to star in her best-known television role, as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun. Field also appeared in The Girl with Something Extra. While starring on The Flying Nun, Sally tried her hand at singing, releasing an album on Colgems Records in 1967 and cracking the Billboard Hot 100 with one single, Felicidad, in 1967.

She had several guest appearances, including a recurring role on the western comedy Alias Smith and Jones starring Pete Duel (with whom she had worked on Gidget) and Ben Murphy, and the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episode The Whisper.

Having played mostly comic characters on television, Field had a difficult time being cast in dramatic roles. She studied with famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who had previously helped Marilyn Monroe go beyond the "bimbo" roles with which her career had begun. Soon after, Field landed the title role in the 1976 TV film Sybil, the first of two known to have been based on the book written by Flora Rheta Schreiber.

Field's dramatic portrayal of Sybil, a young woman afflicted with multiple personality syndrome in the TV film not only garnered her an Emmy Award in 1977, but also enabled her to break through the typecasting she had experienced from television roles.

Field had a number of critical and commercial successes in movies, particularly in the 1980s. In 1977 she co-starred with Burt Reynolds Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed in that year's #2 grossing film Smokey and the Bandit.

In 1979, she played a union organizer in Norma Rae, a successful film that established her status as a dramatic actress. She won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1981, Field played a prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jonesin the South-set comedy Back Roads, which received middling reviews and grossed $11 million at the box office.

Field won another Academy Award in 1985 for her starring role in Places in the Heart Also in 1985, she co-starred with James Garnerin Murphy's Romance. In A&E's biography of Garner, Field reported that her on-screen kiss with Garner was the best cinematic kiss she had ever had.

She has had supporting roles in other movies, including Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) in which she played the wife of Robin Williams and the love interest of Pierce Brosnan, followed by the role of Forrest's mother in Forrest Gump (1994). She is only 10 years older than Tom Hanks, with whom she had co-starred six years earlier in Punchline.

On television, Field had a recurring role on ER in the 2000–2001 season as Dr. Abby Lockhart's mother Maggie, who is struggling to cope with bipolar disorder, a role for which she won an Emmy Award in 2001. After her critically acclaimed stint on the show, she returned to the role in 2003 and 2006. She also starred in the very short-lived 2002 series The Court.

Field has also ventured into the realm of directing. Her first directorial stint was for the television film, The Christmas Tree (1996). She also directed the feature film Beautiful (2000), as well as an episode of the TV mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon (1998).

Field was a late addition to the Abcdrama Brothers & Sisters, which debuted in September 2006. In the show's pilot, the role of matriarch Nora Walker had been played by actress Betty Buckley. However, the producers of the show decided to take the character of Nora in another direction, and Field was cast in the role. She won the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in her role as Nora Walker. Field recently had a voice role as Marina del Ray, the villain in Disney's The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, which was released in August of 2008.