The actress reminisced about her “tumultuous relationship” with Reynolds, which began after he sought her as his costar in 1977’s “Smokey and the Bandit.”

Sally Field thought she’d ‘pass out’ from nerves on first date with Burt Reynolds: ‘I didn’t know how to be that girl’

The actress reminisced about her "tumultuous relationship" with Reynolds, which began after he sought her as his costar in 1977's "Smokey and the Bandit."

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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June 14, 2026 11:08 p.m. ET

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Burt Reynolds and Sally Field in 'Smokey and the Bandit' (1976). Credit:

FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty

- Sally Field is looking back on the early days of her relationship with Burt Reynolds.

- Field told Ben Mankiewicz, the host of TCM's *Talking Pictures *podcast, that she was "so nervous" before her first date with Reynolds, "I thought I would pass out."

- Reynolds sought Field out to costar in 1977's *Smokey and the Bandit*, the first of four films they'd make together.

Even though she's a two-time Oscar winner, Sally Field still gets first-date jitters like the rest of us.

The iconic actress looked back on one of the most storied relationships of her career — that with her *Smokey and the Bandit *costar Burt Reynolds — on Thursday's episode of TCM's *Talking Pictures** *podcast.

Field got her start in Hollywood as the teenage star of the wholesome ABC sitcom *Gidget*, which she followed up with the TV movie *Sybil*, in which she played a young woman living with dissociative identity disorder. Field told *Talking Pictures *host Ben Mankiewicz that when she got a call from Reynolds scoping her out as his potential costar in the uber-cool *Smokey and the Bandit*, she couldn't believe her ears.

"I got this phone call, and it was from Burt Reynolds, and he wanted me to do this film, and the script was really, really bad, he said. And it was really, really bad," she joked. "I was so shocked that he would call me, and I thought, 'He couldn't have seen *Sybil*, because boy, I look really like a very mentally ill person in it.' And he said, 'No, I hadn't seen it. I just always liked you in *Gidget*.'"

Surprised as she was, Field agreed to meet Reynolds for a date, despite an onslaught of nerves.

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field.

Colella/Globe Photos/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

"I was so nervous, I thought I would pass out," Field recalled. "I hadn't really ever been on any dates. I started when I was 18 in television and the whole world of that ilk was swept away from me."

Though it took place a number of decades ago, the *Steel Magnolias *star still remembers the date vividly: "He couldn't come in the lobby. So he had his bodyguard, Pete, [who] knocked on my door. I went down and I remember just sort of being a fool, a clown. I only know how to be a clown when I'm nervous. We went — did we even go to dinner? — yeah, we went to dinner. I think there were others there... I just was nervous. It was all a blur. Like, what was I doing there? I didn't know. I had learned how to be an actor, but I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to be that girl."

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The pair of future Hollywood icons ended hitting it off. They went on to date for five years, between 1976 and 1980. They made four movies together during that time — *Smokey and the Bandit *(1977), *Hooper *(1978), *The End *(1978), and *Smokey and the Bandit II* (1980).

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"Burt was a wonderful, but incredibly complicated character man, who was very much like my stepfather that I grew up with," Field explained. "And I had a really tumultuous relationship with my stepfather. He frightened me and he tormented me, and yet, I worshiped him."

In May, Field detailed one of their fights that led to the relationship eventually breaking off.

"He didn't want me to do *Norma Rae*, called her a 'whore,' and it was because she had some sexual past," Field said, recalling the 1979 biopic of labor activist Crystal Lee Sutton that won her an Academy Award."He threw the script at me. He wanted to control me, and because I was standing up [to him], he said, 'Boy, you're letting this get the better of you.' And I said, 'This is the better of me.'"

You can watch Field's full interview on the *Talking Pictures *podcast above.

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