Sally Field wasn't your typical ''All-American Girl'' despite what it seemed onscreen
Sally Field started her career when she was only 19 years old. She had to deal with all the usual pressures of growing up: acne, navigating a social life, school and a handful of awkward first dates.
But on top of living the typical teen life off-screen, Field had to deal with something extra. She had to learn how to balance growing up onscreen with getting older in real life.
While most young adults her age would have been applying for college, making plans with friends or preparing for prom, Field was navigating a career as an actress, doing interviews, publicity stunts and being stripped of her privacy.
Field started her career by playing the role of Gidget on the 1965 series Gidget. Gidget was a typical teenager who loved to surf and represented the perfect "All-American Girl."
According to a 1973 interview with the Edmonton Journal, the "All-American Girl" image was a hard one for Field to keep up. Although she looked perfect onscreen, her life off-screen was far from it.
In fact, this "All-American girl" did something many Americans didn't do at the time: Go to therapy. Although she came off as a bundle of laughs in Gidget, she was masking how she really felt when the cameras stopped rolling.
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"Well, how would the studio have liked it if I told the world their 'All-American Girl' was in therapy since 18, and that she was a very disturbed person?" Field said. "All the time I was working on both series I had to pretend I was Miss Typical Teen, the girl with no problems — when problems were so much part of my life."
Part of her troubles revolved around the fact that she was 19, but emotionally and socially she played the part of a 14-year-old onscreen. In the interview, she said the transition from a teen to an adult was difficult to do as an actress.
By the time Gidget had been cancelled, Field had moved on to The Flying Nun, desperate to transform her image.
But during her time on the series, she was finding it harder to keep a smiling face and to keep up with her American girl persona.
"I wanted to escape, to pretend that The Nun didn't exist," Field said. "I'd rush home and shut myself off from every reminder of the show the minute I could leave work," Field said. "After awhile I didn't even want to help publicize the show. And, in my mind, the people connected with the studio became adversaries."
After The Flying Nun, Field went on to The Girl With Something Extra. She was around 28 when she started the series, and although she was hesitant to act in another series, she felt she had matured both personally and in her career.
According to the interview, she credited therapy, stability of marriage and children for getting herself together.
"I've learned one must keep working for awareness as to what makes one feel a certain way, why guilt and insecurities exist," Field said.
At 77, Field has a long legacy in Hollywood, and even though she wasn't the typical "All-American Girl," she represented so many Americans who felt the way she did.