Sally Field Confesses Childhood Sexual Abuse Left Her Filled With 'Rage' — As Iconic Actress Used 'Anger' to Help Snag Her First Oscar Win
Sally Field admitted the childhood sexual abuse she suffered left her raging.
May 8 2026, Published 5:45 p.m. ET
Sally Field has revealed how acting became her escape from the "rage" and trauma she carried after allegedly enduring childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The 79-year-old went on to describe how she was able to "tap into" that "anger" while filming the movie that led to her first Academy Award win for Best Actress.
Sally Field 'Filled With Rage' After Childhood Sexual Abuse
Field recently opened up about her 'very complicated childhood.'
"Being a little girl raised in the '50s and having a very complicated childhood with my stepfather and even my mother at times, I was filled with rage. Really filled with rage," Field explained in a new interview.
"And it was working with Lee Strasberg that allowed me to begin to tap into it, to not let it devour me," she said about the famed acting coach, who helped craft the dramatic talents of some of the biggest names of his day, including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and James Dean.
Sally Field Channeld Her 'Anger' Into First Oscar Win
Field and Dustin Hoffman showed off their Best Lead Actress and Best Lead Actor Oscars in 1980.
The rage over her childhood trauma was something Field was able to draw from while filming 1979's Norma Rae, where she played a scrappy union organizer.
"I asked [director] Marty Ritt, 'How angry can I be here?' He said, 'How angry are you?'" she recalled.
"And I said, 'Angry.' And so that was the first time I was ever really able to learn how to tap into my own rage on film," Field confessed.
The role won the icon her first Oscar. She'd go on to win again in 1984 for Places in the Heart, where the former teen star famously raved in her speech about how she finally felt accepted in Hollywood, "I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me."
Sally Field's 'Unorthodox Career'
The actress easily transitioned from drama to comedy in her decades-long career.
In that same speech, Field told her peers, "I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect."
She was referring to how, as a young actress, the Pasadena, California, native played cutesy comedy roles, including Gidget and The Flying Nun.
"There was a part of me that was very much like Gidget," Field said in the new interview, while promoting her new Netflix film Remarkably Bright Creatures, about her iconic role as a surfer girl at the age of 18.
"I knew how to make people laugh, but there was a darkness that was yet to be explored," the actress hauntingly revealed about how it took years before she landed the dramatic roles where she could channel her "rage."
Field continued in light, comedic roles for years until landing the lead in the 1976 television miniseries Sybil, about a woman with multiple personality disorder.
Sally Field Shared Her Childhood Trauma in 2018 Memoir
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Sally Field wrote about her childhood trauma from sexual abuse in her 2018 memoir.
Field opened up about being sexually abused by her stuntman stepdad, Jock Mahoney, in her 2018 memoir, In Pieces.
The abuse began when she was around five years old, when her mother, who had a drinking problem, married Mahoney. It continued until Field was 14.
"He loved me enough not to invade me. He never invaded me. In all the many times. Not really. It would have been one thing if he had held me down and raped me. Made me bleed. But he didn’t. Was that love? Was that because he loved me?" she asked in one passage.
In another, Field wrote, "I knew. I felt both a child, helpless, and not a child. Powerful. This was power. And I owned it. But I wanted to be a child — and yet," while also sharing that she "couldn’t expect protection to come from my mother."
