Over the course of Sally Field‘s storied career, there have been opportunities to discover her character on set (like the ad-lib-heavy Mrs. Doubtfire) and those where it was all on the page (Tony Kushner’s Lincoln script). In Netflix’sRemarkably Bright Creatures, an adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s novel that’s sold more than 2 million copies, it was a little bit of both. “Lewis Pullman and I were improvising all the time,” Field says of her primary co-star … at least the one that’s not a CGI octopus. “That relationship was really created out of he and I playing with each other. You can kind of see it in the movie.”
Her Emmy nom for the work isn’t just interesting because it’s her 10th (she has three wins), she’s also the first actress in nearly a decade to earn one for a TV movie. But for Field, who went from ABC’s The Flying Nun to an Oscar winner for Norma Rae early in her career, the medium is something she’s learned not to focus on.
Is there some role or project you’re still itching to do that’s not being presented to you?
My whole life, it’s been very difficult to find projects that I wanted to do. In the beginning, it was very difficult to find projects where they would even let me in the room to audition. I started in situation comedy television in 1964. In those days, they didn’t let you out. You lived and you died on that railroad track. You weren’t getting out. Even after I got to a place where [they’d let me audition], it has always been difficult to find films, characters, stories that I want to be part of me … that I would go, “OK, that’s it. This is the one.” It’s always taken me a long time. I never was an actor that was able to work back-to-back-to-back, doing one project after another. I just had to keep my head down, as they say.
