Sally Field was not sure that she would have the courage to publish her new dissertation: NPR

Sally Field, emeritus and Oscar winner could have written a memoir of famous people. But his new book, In pieces, is rather an extremely personal and vulnerable accounting of his life and career.

Field, now 71, started when she was a teenager in the 1960s Gidget, in which she played the main character – a clean creaky surfer girl living with her loving and widowed father. But his character on TV was at odds with his life at home. In the book, Field describes the abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather, actor Jock Mahoney. The abuse was both emotional and sexual, and Field claims that these experiences forced her to divide to survive; to ward off pain and push forward.

This impulse showed in her game. "As if we were changing a switch, I started making bubbles," she writes about her leading roles on Gidget and The flying nun

His healthy first roles on sitcoms made it almost impossible to transition to serious projects, Field told NPR. She remembers signing autographs while waiting to receive unemployment benefits after The flying nun has been cancelled. But she would end up in serious and difficult roles like Sybil, a woman struggling with mental illness, in the television mini-series of the same name. She would win Oscars for her shoots in movies Norma Rae and Places in the heart.

Throughout the book, Field writes haphazardly about failed relationships, questionable decisions, and missed opportunities. And she gave herself permission to write with such honesty because she was not sure that she would eventually publish the book. "I wrote it for myself, I did not know if I would have the courage to publish it," she says. "[But] I felt this urgency, this anguish, this need to find something that reigned in me. … I discovered that I had to put all the pieces in front of me and try to assemble them and see if I could witness something … and know the answer to the reason why I felt like that.

Highlights of the interview

Why did she hang unopened letters and unread criticism for decades?

I do not know. Except that I'm in pieces and that has always been the case since my childhood. I think part of me knew something that others did not know. I saved him with the feeling that part of me … would need one day. I've kept boxes and boxes of things and [it] Only now – in the last seven years alone – have I literally gone through all the pieces of paper. …

I would refuse some things. I was afraid to discover things that I did not want to know. Even in my own journals that I'd written all my life – I guess by the mid-twenties, I'd never come back to read them again – any of them. Not a page. And I was forced to go back and watch episodes that I knew I had written and who were horrified to have deliberately forgotten them.

Go to Tijuana to abort at a time when it was not legal in the United States

It's deeply rooted and etched in my psyche. … I know how horrible it was for this 17 year old girl: how terrified I was and how I could have died. And I think of all the women around the world who … lose their lives or their ability to have other children, or who are deeply ashamed because they live in a society or with a government that chooses to consider unwanted pregnancies. under a certain day – that all of a sudden [it] is the fault of the woman and that the woman has no choice as to how this affects her life. That the group of cells – if you detect it early – is more important than it is. It's horrible for me. I know first-hand what it looks like.

Taking the role of happy and bubbly, Gidget, the young surfer in the 1960s, a few weeks after her abortion

I think I represented the "girl next door" to the "American girl" much more than was visible. … Many women of my generation – and even generations before and probably generations – go through so many things similar to these and yet perceived as a girl next door, virgin, sunny and joyful.

On the fight to find work after being launched on ABC The flying nun

In the 60s sitcom days, there was a clear demarcation between film and television and the film did not want no matter what do with those who came from television – especially women and especially the situation of comedy and especially The flying nun … So it was trying to break down these barriers.

I'll just tell myself: if I'm not where I want it, it's that I'm not good enough. Because I felt even then that if I said it was because I was facing an unfair system, or that I was typing, or if I. I had no power to change anything.

The only way to move one day at a time, to put one foot in front of the other and to be energized and obliged was to feel that it was in my hands – that I had to work harder, that I had to get better. … I had to be a lot better than anyone who came into the room. …

I was lucky enough to be taken to The Actors Studio [the legendary acting school run by Lee Strasberg] in Southern California … and it really changed my life because I could do The flying nun in the day and yet learn to do the job at night.

On the dating of the actor Burt Reynolds – a relationship that she describes as emotionally controlling and abusive

I've always thought of him rather nostalgically. … It's been a very important part of my life, but for a very small part of my life. I was only with him for about three years, and maybe two years later. But it was so important in my own existence, my own movement as a person.

I was a little afraid that he read this – and now, at least, he is safe, because I think it would hurt him. It's not that I say really negative things about it, but I reveal … how I felt and how I was trapped in an old behavior – and how I was predisposed. It was a preformed rut on my way. And I could not see it coming and I did not know how to get out. I had been carefully trained to fall into that. … we were a perfect match of faults.

On Reynolds not supporting her desire to attend the Emmys ceremony in 1977 – where she won the Outstanding Leading Actress Award in a special drama or comedy for her role in the mini 1976 television series Sybil

My predisposition [is] … not to be seen … not to speak and say: Look, it's important to me. I will do it. If you do not feel good tonight … I'm really sorry but I have to do it. But I could not do anything like it. So I ended up watching it alone in the rented condo with the sound down. …

[There are] Schemes that are set up in your life as an adult, you have to work all your life to try to unravel yourself. Because they may be survival habits when you are a child, but as an adult, they completely hinder you and are unproductive. …

As a child, because of my relationship with my stepfather … in my mind to be seen, to be loved, I also had to be terrified and I could never say what that I really felt. So I had to be invisible.

If she can now look back and enjoy her accomplishments

Do I still have that feeling of gnawing, you know, needing more and wanting to reach out for something that is just out of my reach? Yes quite. Yes. But can I now look back and feel the length of my trip? Yes. And I could not do that before. And I think that largely concerned the system that I had set up as a child to not see the truth.

Connor Donevan and Jolie Myers have produced and edited this interview for the broadcast. Jessica Reedy and Beth Novey have adapted it for the Web.