Burt Reynolds Calls Sally Field the Love of His Life: 'I Miss Her Terribly'

Burt Reynolds and Sally Field in 1978 (Getty Images)

There was once a time when Burt Reynolds and Sally Field were like Jay Z and Beyoncé: they worked together, they dated, they were beautiful. But that all came crashing down in the early 1980s when they broke up. Field went on to marry Alan Greisman (that marriage ended in 1993, although the final settlement wasn’t resolved until this year) and Reynolds went on to marry Loni Anderson (that marriage also ended in 1993). All these years later, Reynolds still holds a candle for the Flying Nun.

“I miss her terribly,” Reynolds, 79, tells Vanity Fair in a refreshingly candid retrospective on his life and career. “Even now, it’s hard on me. I don’t know why I was so stupid. Men are like that, you know. You find the perfect person, and then you do everything you can to screw it up.”

Reynolds also called Field, now 69, the love of his life.

While Reynolds and Field were dating, they starred in several movies together, including Smokey and the Bandit, its sequel, The End, and Hooper.

It’s not the first time Reynolds has waxed poetic about his time with Field. In 2012, he told Piers Morgan that the two were meant to be together.

“Had I been smarter, you know, with one lady… I still would be together with her. Sally. Without a doubt,” Reynolds said on the British show Piers Morgan’s Life Stories. “I asked her [to marry me] at the wrong time. She asked me at the wrong time. I missed out on that one, that’s for sure. I think we would have been very happy, yes. I’d like to think so. I’m not sure she’d say so. She’s just a very special woman. I really handled that one pretty bad.”