Sally Field hated being called cute during her time on The Flying Nun
Sally Field started her career as a 19-year-old playing the part of a young, adorable teenager onscreen in the 1965 series Gidget. The beginning stages of her long acting career were based around the fact that she was a young, naive, "All-American" girl.
Many words could be used to describe Field and her career, but "cute" is not one of them, at least according to her. As a young adult, she struggled with being compared to and put in the box of a teen.
"I hate being called cute," Field said in a 1968 interview with News-Journal. "When someone tells me that I want to throw up. I want them to grab me and say 'Isn't she simply gorgeous?' I've tried to change. Many times. Like when I have a really super date and get a new dress. Something real sexy. But I always turn out looking just the same."
According to the interview, one of her many attempts at coming across as sophisticated was buying a very nice, totally souped-up Ferrari. Field said the first person who saw her driving it asked: "Whose car is it?"
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"I can't win," Field added.
Even when Field was young, she couldn't escape the word. "Cute" was always part of her world. In the interview, she said she had trouble finding a boyfriend in her school days because of how young she had always looked.
However, her luck changed in the late '60s when she met her first husband, Steven Craig. But even then, Field reflected on what it was like for her being labeled as "cute" for so much of her youth and part of her adulthood.
"When I was 13, little 10-year-olds would come up to me. It was terribly discouraging," Field said. "I was the one at the parties who passed out the peanuts or changed the records during kissing games. All this didn't change until the boys grew older and were looking for younger girls. When they became interested in girls who looked 16, they noticed me. But by then I was 20."
Although her role playing Gidget, and role in The Flying Nun may not have helped with her "cute" label, they did give her the tools to start learning herself better as both an actress and a young adult.
"In a way, I am not what you would call a modern girl," Field said. "Not that I don't have my opinions. Sometimes I feel guilty that I don't do enough about them. But other people talk about LSD and all that. Then they look at me. I refuse to smoke or drink. They look at the way I dress and talk, comb my hair, and scrub my face and they say 'Oh, God! This can't be for real.' By teen standards I'm a cube. And by grown-up standards I'm cute. Like I said, I can't win."