Pain and Heartache Ailing Sally Field, 77, Will Take to Her Grave Revealed: Single 'Steel Magnolias' Star 'Scarred by Disastrous Love Life'

Veteran actress Sally Field appears frail and gaunt as she continues to live her life away from the spotlight .

Knewz.com can reveal the Mrs. Doubtfire star, 77, was recently pictured making a rare outing in Los Angeles , months after slamming ageist Hollywood execs for not creating enough roles for older women and crediting her children for “saving her life”.

Field’s last major film was 80 For Brady , released in February last year, but big-screen opportunities have dwindled in recent years.

It’s a far cry from her heyday in the Eighties and Nineties where she landed big parts in family blockbusters Mrs. Doubtfire and Forrest Gump .

But it was her 1977 movie Smokey and the Bandit which the Oscar winner remembers most fondly, due to her hunky co-star Burt Reynolds, who became her lover and the man her friends call “the true love of her life” – despite being married twice.

Indeed, it’s believed Field never got over the split and the bitter fallout between the pair seriously affected her in later life.

Field met the Cannonball actor shortly after her split from first husband Steven Craig and was a stay-at-home mother of two at the time.

Field said: “I never felt like a grown-up woman – sexual person.

“I’d go around trying to act really sexy. Right when I was doing this act, I met Burt.”

She continued: “Burt was the most important thing that ever happened in my life.

“He rescued my career and literally put me to work. He gave me a new lease on life.”

Their passion spilled over on the set of Smokey in Georgia , saying at the time of filming: “I’ve never felt this way about a man before.

“I loved my ex-husband, but he was my friend and I loved him as a friend.

“But it is another thing completely with Burt. I’m a woman, with a man.

“We fit together like pieces of a puzzle , Burt and I, he gives me self-confidence and I pound on the door of his emotions until he lets them out.”

However, Field’s jealousy caused friction between the pair during their five-year relationship , but she became increasingly infatuated with him.

She recalls: “One day Burt said he needed my strength. So I said, ‘I’m here.’ And he said, ‘No, I mean I want you here. I want you to sit on my lap. I want you to step on my footsteps. I want you to touch me all day long.’

“So all day long, I just was all over him, I kissed him about 30,000 times.

“I wanted to be everything he ever wanted.”

They eventually split after Field grew tired with Reynolds’ womanizing ways and she went on to date Johnny Carson and Baretta star Robert Blake, but no one could replace Reynolds in her heart.

In 1984, she married movie producer Alan Greisman, but divorced a decade later, with friends believing she never got over Reynolds, who died aged 82 in 2018.