Sally Field’s upcoming memoir, “In Pieces,” won’t be read by her former lover and co-star Burt Reynolds and, for that, the actress is grateful, she told The New York Times.
“This would hurt him,” Field said in an interview published Tuesday, following Reynolds’ death last week at the age of 82. “I felt glad that he wasn’t going to read it, he wasn’t going to be asked about it, and he wasn’t going to have to defend himself or lash out, which he probably would have. I did not want to hurt him any further.”
Field starred with Reynolds in movies like “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Hooper,” and off screen the pair had a romantic relationship that, she told the Times, was “confusing and complicated, and not without loving and caring, but really complicated and hurtful to me.”
The actress linked the relationship she had with Reynolds to the one she had with her sexually abusive stepfather, Jock Mahoney. “I was somehow exorcising something that needed to be exorcised,” Field told The Times. “I was trying to make it work this time.”
According to The Times, in Field’s book, Reynolds is characterized as “swaggering and charismatic, and their connection as immediate and intense. She also portrays him as controlling of her, only able to accept certain aspects of her life and personality while uninterested in or disapproving of others.”
The Times noted, “Field writes that Reynolds took Percodan, Valium and barbiturates” while filming “Smokey,” and received “mysterious chest injections,” though a physical examination she arranged for him came back clear. The actress says Reynolds refused her requests he seek therapy, calling it “self-delusional poppycock.”