Born to please

>> Sally Field on directing Beautiful, being a woman in Hollywood and passing on the Flying Nun reunion movie

by MATTHEW HAYS

The plot to Sally Field's feature directorial debut, Beautiful, could be seen as emotionally autobiographical. Minnie Driver plays the lead, a woman so obsessed with pleasing others and making up for a rough childhood that she fixates on winning various beauty pageants.

It may sound like a stretch, but Field acknowledges much of the drive behind her 35-year career emanated from a need to please others. During her childhood, she dealt with an overbearing stepfather, a stunt man who was prone to extreme mood swings.

But despite its apparent overlap with her own life, Field didn't write Beautiful, nor did she spearhead the project. Driver and her producer sister, Kate, approached Field with the script, who immediately felt "I must do this. I liked that [Minnie's] character was boldly funny, was terribly flawed and someone who runs a fine line between being liked and not being liked. What I hope is that you walk away with the hope that she survives and that you identify with her because of her struggle."

Memorable mentors
As a novice director, Field certainly has a number of celebrated teachers to glean from. Her CV includes such A-listers as Sydney Pollack (Absence of Malice), Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), Robert Benton (Places in the Heart) and the late Martin Ritt (Norma Rae). (She continues to act and will appear in six episodes of this season of ER as a troubled mother figure.) Field, who won Oscars for both Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, says she hopes she's learned something from all the directors she's worked with, but holds Ritt up in the highest esteem. "Certainly, Marty was my good and dear friend and stays in my head about everything. I hope he's there."

Field says her beginnings as a director have been linked to growing limitations as an actor. Roles begin to dry up for women in Hollywood by about 45, she concedes, and branching out was part of remaining vital in the business. "I get bored with some of the roles as an actor. I get bored with playing the same character over and over again. You get bored with putting all of your energy into one-dimensional characters. That gets boring. One of the reasons I wanted to see if I could direct was because as a storyteller, which is what I consider myself to be as an actor, I have more choice. I can tell stories about someone who doesn't look like me. I can tell stories about a young, tall, beautiful woman, which I will never be, no matter how hard I try. I love the idea that I can tell much more diverse stories."

Generation gap
So what about the loud complaints of Meryl Streep and Cher--among many others--who have argued that actresses are put out to pasture in middle age: is Hollywood's age-gender gap closing at all? Field is both blunt and realistic in her assessment of the situation.

"It's about the same. I've been answering this question for about 25 years. And every year they say, 'It's a big issue this year.' It's been a big issue, it is an issue. It is unfair, but the world is unfair. Show me a single place where the world is fair. There isn't such a place. It is a tradition. It's changing, but very slowly.

"The first thing you do is raise your fist and rail against it. But that doesn't get you very far. You get a sore arm and a lot of people looking at you like you're a big whiner."

But isn't that the victorious end of Norma Rae?

"No, because Norma Rae actually does something. She makes a difference."

Finally, it must be asked. Since TV shows like The Brady Bunch and Charlie's Angels have been brought back as high-profile, big-budget features, would Field be willing to make an appearance in a Flying Nun movie?

"No," she says of the series she left at age 21. "Had enough of that." :

Beautiful opens Friday, Sept. 29