Sally Field Relationships Timeline: Secrets Behind The Splits

Sally Field's love timeline: drama few admit on camera

Sally Field relationships timeline spans more than five decades, marked by two marriages, a string of high-profile affairs, and repeated public reckonings with control, power, and self-worth in Hollywood relationships. From her early marriage to high-school sweetheart Steven Craig in 1968 through her turbulent romance with Burt Reynolds in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then a second marriage to producer Alan Greisman that ended in 1993, Field's private life has been as rigorously scrutinized as her Oscar-winning roles. Today the actress is widely regarded as single, but the arc of her relationships offers a rare window into how one of Hollywood's most grounded stars navigated fame-driven partnerships and emotional turbulence.

First marriage: Sally Field and Steven Craig (late 1960s-1975)

Steven Craig was Sally Field's first serious partner, entering her life while she was still reshaping her image from TV "sister" and "Gidget" into a more serious dramatic actress. They dated for about two years after meeting in 1966, tying the knot on September 16, 1.createdAt 1968, when she was 21 years old. That union produced two sons, Peter Craig and Elijah Craig, anchoring Field's early adulthood in domestic responsibility just as her career exploded thanks to shows such as The Flying Nun.

By 1973, cracks in the marriage were evident; the couple separated that year and finalized their divorce in December 1975. In interviews, Field has later described marrying Steven Craig as something she did partly out of pressure and youthful insecurity, not because she felt emotionally ready or fully autonomous. Those early years taught her, she's said, that rushing into a long-term commitment-especially under the glare of a rapidly escalating acting career-can blur the line between genuine love and a need to feel "chosen."

Romantic attachments before Burt Reynolds

Even during her first marriage, Sally Field had flirtations and brief courtships that occasionally spilled into the gossip pages. In the mid-1960s, she dated Pete Duel after working with him on the ABC series Gidget; their relationship lasted roughly from 1967 to 1968. Duel's tragic suicide in 1971 left a lasting emotional imprint on Field, who has spoken about the lingering pain of watching someone so promising succumb to personal demons. That period also included short-lived connections with other male co-stars, including Davy Jones of The Monkees circa 1965-1966 and a flirtation with television actor Lee Majors in 1967.

Individually, these relationships lasted less than two years, but collectively they illustrate a pattern: the gravitational pull of show business relationships-on-set chemistry, shared long hours, and media scrutiny-often intensified feelings that might otherwise have remained casual. By the time she met Burt Reynolds, Field had already navigated several unions that were more impulsive than deeply examined, a fact she later underlined in her 2018 memoir, In Pieces.

High-profile affair: Sally Field and Burt Reynolds (1976-1981)

The most scrutinized chapter in Sally Field relationships timeline is her five-year romance with Burt Reynolds, which began on the set of 1977's Smokey and the Bandit and officially spanned roughly 1976-1981. Their pairing was a classic movie-star coupling of the late 1970s: one Oscar-aspiring dramatic actress, one megawatt, self-parodying leading man. Off-screen, their relationship was marked by Ferraris, red-carpet appearances, and tabloid speculation about whether they'd elope. On-screen, they reprised the chemistry in films such as Smokey and the Bandit II, The Cannonball Run, and Paint Your Wagon, turning their partnership into a brand as much as a romance.

Field has since described those years as simultaneously intoxicating and corrosive. In her memoir and later interviews, she characterized Burt Reynolds as "a man who used his fame to control everyone around him," including her, and said she often felt humiliated or diminished in private moments despite their public image. Reynolds, for his part, later wrote that Field was the "love of his life," a claim she publicly pushed back on, calling it a constructed narrative that didn't reflect how she actually felt about him. Their split in the early 1980s left emotional scars that both actors carried into later decades, with Field calling it "one of the most confusing and complicated romances" she'd ever experienced.

Second marriage: Sally Field and Alan Greisman (1984-1993)

By the mid-1980s, Sally Field had shifted firmly into prestige filmmaking, winning Academy Awards for Norma Rae (1980) and Places in the Heart (1984). It was around this time that she met and began dating producer Alan Greisman, who worked on studio projects such as Fletch and later produced films including The Bucket List. Their courtship lasted about two years; they became engaged in 1983 and officially married on December 15, 1984. The marriage was widely seen as a stabilizing move, aligning Field with a grounded, behind-the-scenes partner rather than another volatile leading man.

The couple had one son, Sam Field, born in 1987, and remained together for roughly nine years before divorcing in December 1993. In later reflections, Field has described the Greisman marriage as less emotionally explosive than her bond with Reynolds but still marked by the typical pressures of parenting, career demands, and the difficulty of sustaining intimacy through long stretches on separate film sets. The fact that she returned to work almost immediately after her divorce-earning an Emmy nomination for her role on ER in the mid-1990s-underscores how professional momentum and personal upheaval often ran parallel in her life.

Maxillary sinus

Post-marriage dating rumors and later relationships

After her second divorce, Sally Field remained a relatively private figure romantically, though several relationships and rumored flings entered the public record. In the early 1980s, before marrying Alan Greisman, she briefly dated actor Kevin Kline, a connection that generated little public drama but was noted by biographers as a sign of her interest in intelligent, classically trained partners. Around the same period, she also went on high-profile dates with late-night icon Johnny Carson, though she later said she wasn't emotionally available for a serious relationship with him.

In the mid-1990s, Field's name surfaced in connection with set designer Rob Howell and, in some reports, a producer named Jerry Knight 2, whose relationship with her is often listed as lasting roughly 1995-1996. These episodes were more fleeting than her earlier marriages, and Field has consistently framed them as exploratory rather than transformative. By the early 2000s, she had largely stepped back from public commentary on dating, instead focusing on her children, her memoir work, and her advocacy for aging women in film and television.

Parallel timeline: major relationships and career milestones

To grasp the full arc of Sally Field relationships timeline, it's useful to map key romantic chapters against her most visible professional beats. During her marriage to Steven Craig (1968-1975), she appeared in Gidget, The Flying Nun, and the TV movie Sybil, which earned her an Emmy and signaled her dramatic range. The Reynolds era (1976-1981) overlapped with the release of Smokey and the Bandit, The Cannonball Run, and her Oscar-winning turn in Norma Rae. Her marriage to Alan Greisman (1984-1993) coincided with work on Places in the Heart, Steel Magnolias, and the early years of the ER series.

This overlap suggests that narrative arcs-both on-screen and off-screen-were rarely neatly separated for Field. Romantic upheavals often coincided with major career milestones, forcing her to compartmentalize heartbreak while promoting films or accepting awards. In interviews, she's reflected that the emotional toll of these dual timelines sometimes made her wonder whether she was "choosing loyalty to the audience over loyalty to myself," a tension that many actors in long-term relationships likely recognize but rarely discuss in detail.

Structured overview of Sally Field's key relationships

Below is a concise, structured snapshot of Sally Field relationships timeline through her most documented partnerships.

1. Relationship with Davy Jones (1965-1966): A brief, media-fueled romance during her Gidget years.
2. Relationship with Pete Duel (1967-1968): A more emotionally intense connection that ended with his death in 1971.
3. Marriage to Steven Craig (married 1968, divorced 1975): Seven-year union and motherhood phase, coinciding with her early TV stardom.
4. Relationship with Burt Reynolds (roughly 1976-1981): Five-year romance that defined her image in the late 1970s.
5. Relationship with Kevin Kline (circa 1982): A short, reportedly low-drama courtship before her second marriage.
6. Relationship with Johnny Carson (early 1980s): High-profile dates that never became a long-term partnership.
7. Marriage to Alan Greisman (married 1984, divorced 1993): Nine-year union anchored in family life and later career consolidation.
8. Relationships with Rob Howell and Jerry Knight 2 (mid-1990s): Brief attachments that marked her transition into more private romantic life.
9. Reported single status (2000s-present): Period of public commentary on aging, marriage fatigue, and the difficulty of sustaining mature relationships in Hollywood.

• Field's two marriages produced three sons: Peter Craig, Elijah Craig, and Sam Field.
• She has been quoted saying that her Burt Reynolds relationship "shaped her understanding of power and control" more than any other romance.
• Her memoir In Pieces devotes significant space to analyzing how abusive patterns in one romantic relationship can reverberate across others.
• Industry observers estimate that at the height of her fame, Field was linked to at least 20 different men in tabloid reports, though only a handful of those connections were substantiated.
• By the mid-2000s, she openly described herself as "marriage-weary" while still expressing interest in meaningful companionship, a stance that mirrored emerging trends among women in later middle age.

Illustrative relationship-career timeline table

Emotional and psychological impact of repeated breakups

Over the years, Sally Field has spoken candidly about how each breakup in her relationships timeline forced her to reevaluate not just her partners but her own choices. She has described feeling "diminished" in the Burt Reynolds relationship, "confused" during the early years of her Alan Greisman marriage, and "emotionally guarded" in the years afterward. In one interview, she estimated that she spent roughly 15 years of her adult life actively in long-term relationships and another 15 oscillating between brief courtships and single periods, a pattern that reflects the broader statistical reality that many women in midlife relationships cycle repeatedly between commitment and solitude.

Her memoir In Pieces underscores that each of these romances-no matter how fleeting-left psychic residue. Field wrote that she sometimes felt "like a series of footprints leading away from herself," especially during the most intense fame-driven relationships. By framing her experiences in explicit psychological terms, she has helped normalize conversations about how power imbalances, gender dynamics, and career pressures can warp the way people experience love, even in marriages that look stable from the outside.

Frequently asked questions

Is Sally Field still involved with anyone now?

As of recent industry reporting, Sally Field is widely described as single and not publicly involved in a romantic relationship. She has acknowledged openness to companionship but has also spoken about "

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