This award isn’t out of left Field.
Andrew Garfield graced the stage at the Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday evening to present a Lifetime Achievement Award to one of the most successful and inspiring actresses in the industry: Sally Field.
“The Amazing Spiderman” co-stars reunited nearly a decade after their superhero film hit theaters, as Garfield called his on-screen aunt “a north star – for all of us.”
“You never drink the Kool-Aid of your brilliance,” the actor gushed of Field, 76, as he presented the award. “You never get high on your own supply. But tonight we’re going to try to make you.”
As Garfield rattled off the “Steel Magnolias” actress’ work on and off screen as a brilliant performer and trailblazing social rights activist, he also applauded her incredible rap sheet of awards she’s already racked up.
“She’s won a lot of s–t. She’s won so much s–t,” he said of Field’s two Oscars, two Golden Globes and three Emmys, in addition to her slew of nominations.
The California native got her start in Hollywood fresh out of high school as the titular character of the sitcom “Gidget” (1965), recalling her first gig “in front of a camera on a freezing cold beach in Malibu.”
“All of a sudden, I was the star of a television series and I became a member of the Screen Actors Guild,” she said in her acceptance speech, noting that, at the time, her 17-year-old self didn’t even have an agent.
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“I remember so clearly putting that paper card in my wallet quietly thrilled to call myself an actor,” she added.
The “Hello, My Name is Doris” star first found performing arts when she was just 12 years old, she said, calling film “magic.”
“On stage, it was the one place I could be freely me,” she shared, noting that she was once “shy,” but often surprised herself on stage. She wasn’t “looking for the applause,” nor was she hiding “behind the characters,” rather, she sought those “precious moments” when she felt “totally, utterly and dangerously alive.”
While it hasn’t been “easy,” “easy is overrated,” she continued.
“I’ve been Mrs. Doubtfire’s employer, Forrest Gump’s mother…and Spiderman’s aunt,” she added. “There is not a day I don’t feel quietly thrilled to call myself an actor.”
Field appeared in blockbusters such as “Steel Magnolias” (1989) and “Forrest Gump” (1994), but most recently, she appeared with her real-life besties Jane Fonda, Lilly Tomlin and Rita Moreno in the football comedy “80 For Brady.”
She told Variety earlier this year that becoming a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award places her amongst her “tribe” – in other words, fellow actors.
“It’s the group I most wanted to be respected by and to be included in, and that means a lot to me,” she told the outlet.
