Sally Field Admits: My Book Would've Hurt Burt Reynolds
Oct. 16 2018, Published 3:43 p.m. ET
Burt Reynolds gushed about former costar Sally Field until his last breath, but in a recent interview the actress admitted she felt differently about their troubled relationship.
Talking to This Morning about her new tell-all book, "In Pieces" Field, 71, admitted her words would have hurt Reynolds, had he lived to read them.
During her talk, she said she found it terrifying that her memoir was published just four days before Reynolds' death at age 82. And while she didn't want to cause him any pain with the content of her book, she knew her words would have done so anyway.
"I think it was released four days before he died. It was very, very close. It was kind of horrifying that it was so close, and I certainly never wanted to hurt him anymore than I already had," Field admitted.
RadarOnline.com readers know that various times over the years, the actor admitted he messed up his and Field's relationship by being uncaring and macho. Field agreed.
"I knew this book would hurt him, even though I tried to paint him as the colorful human being that he was, so I don't know. He will always be in my heart and my history, so he will always be there, she said in her interview.
Field and Reynolds dated for five years after meeting on the set of 1977 movie Smokey And The Bandit, but Sally has admitted she couldn't be herself when she was with him. Speaking on British breakfast TV show This Morning she added: "We were a perfect match of flaws. We went together very well, not necessarily for the right reasons. It was a pre-formed rut in my road. I say in the book many times, if I could have been different, would he have been different?"
Fields said that while she doesn't necessarily have regrets, she often wishes things would have panned out differently.
"He was who he was, a man of his time and needed the women that he was with to represent him in a certain way. But would he have been different if I could say, 'Don't do that. I don't like it?' But I couldn't. I couldn't be myself. I was absent. I was behaving the way I was taught and that is to be loved I had to disappear. So, I disappeared," she said.
Sally Field recently claimed the late movie legend — who referred to the Mrs. Doubtfire actress as the love of his life — was a complex man, but their connection was instant.
"He was a complicated man," she said. "We'd known each other about three days, four days. It was instantaneous, and four days felt like four years. You can see it in our faces. We were sort of, you know, deeply entangled. The nature of it wasn't just, 'Oh this is a love affair.' There was some ingredient between us having to do with my care-taking and him needing to be taken care of."
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