Sally Field talks about her love for Philly and sports

Sally Field starred on TV as a teenager, with little idea what she was doing as an actress. Nearly 60 years later, the depth and breadth of her award-winning work is stunning.

In 1982, she tied with Jane Fonda as a People Choice Award winner for favorite movie actress. Now, in 80 for Brady, opening Friday, she’s with Fonda again.

A few years ago, Field shot the TV series Dispatches From Elsewhere in Philadelphia and came away with strong feelings for the city.

“I’ll just tell you right now. I love Philly,” she said recently in a call from Los Angeles. “From the time I started working in the city, I felt like I had some sort of past-life thing there ... I just get the city. I know it’s got some issues, but every city does. But it’s so full of life and art that if I got another project that was shooting in Philly I don’t even care if the project isn’t any good, I would do it.”

As for her career, Field said it started out as an accident. She had been in the drama department in high school and on stage since she was 12. After high school, she had no plans to go to college and no idea what she was going to do. She didn’t have an agent, but she went in for an interview for a TV show and kept getting called back. That’s how she got Gidget.

“I never really started out looking for work,” she said, “but then I had to fight like crazy to get out of situation comedies... That’s where the struggle came for me, not in finding the work but in sort of clawing my way out of the cage that I had been placed in.”

When it came to movies, “they didn’t want me in the room,” she said. “I was crossed off of every list because everybody already thought they knew what I was. Thank God times have changed.”

80 for Brady came to Field through her good friend Fonda — they’ve been pals for 40 years but never found a project to work on together. “But this was a story about older women and sports, and I am a huge sports fan. It wasn’t just older women looking for a date, a better husband, or worried about their children. Older women are a huge audience for sports, and I think we get overlooked.”

Making the movie, Field said, was a blast. “The players who came to work with us (Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, and Marshawn Lynch) were adorable and so much fun to be around. In reality we just laughed our way through the whole thing.”