PORT TOWNSEND–Sally Field appeared at the Rose Theatre on Sunday to pay tribute to the role where she was first taken seriously as an actress.

“This was the role that changed my life,” Field said of “Sybil,” the 1976 television movie in which she played a woman with 16 different personalities.

“I had been appearing in front of the camera since I was 17, and I had been studying and studying and studying, but I wasn’t doing the work that I wanted to be doing until ‘Sybil.'”

Field appeared Sunday with Stewart Stern, who wrote the movie’s screenplay.

The two became fast friends while working on the movie but had not seen each other for many years.

Securing Field

Stern, who wrote “Rebel Without a Cause” and lives in Seattle, was approached in May by Rose Theatre owner Rocky Friedman about screening “Sybil” and inviting Field.

Friedman asked Stern how to persuade Field to attend, and Stern said “just tell her that it is my dream to appear on stage with her.”

Friedman sent an e-mail request, and Field responded affirmatively within two hours.

The event was announced Aug. 17 and sold out the same day.

In the movie, Field begins as a mousy teacher’s assistant who morphs into several disparate characters, often within the same scene.

While casting “Sybil,” Stern told the Rose Theatre audience, there was pressure to cast Natalie Wood, with whom he had worked on “Rebel Without a Cause,” but he opposed this because he didn’t want anybody who was known to be somebody else or whom the audience knew in another context.

Those reading for the part included Susan Sarandon, Marsha Mason and Lily Tomlin.

“The producers wanted us to hire an actress, Mel Ferrer’s wife . . . ,” Stern said.

“Audrey Hepburn,” Field said.

“Yes, Audrey Hepburn. You know, I am 89 years old and don’t remember everything.”

‘Rather drab’

He does remember that he wasn’t convinced that Field was right for the part, describing her as “rather drab” and recalling that he fell asleep shortly after she arrived for her audition.

He was awakened by loud voices of Field and Joanne Woodward rehearsing the scene “and heard a voice that I had never heard before.

“The woman who had just come into the room had the same shape but was a completely different human being.”

The next day, Stern had a message passed on to him from the real Sybil, saying “the only one who can play all the characters is Sally Field.”

Field, 63, starred in several television series, including “Gidget” and “The Flying Nun,” prior to making “Sybil.”

Subsequently, she won two Oscars for “Norma Rae” and “Places in the Heart,” and was in “Steel Magnolias,” “Murphy’s Romance” and “Soapdish,” among others.

Currently, she has a starring role on “Brothers and Sisters,” which appears at 10 p.m. Sundays on CBS.

“Sybil” also broke ground because it was one of the first television miniseries, predating “Roots” by more than a year.

It also was one of the first movies SEmD on television or elsewhere SEmD to depict child abuse, according to Field.

“Before ‘Sybil,’ child abuse wasn’t talked about; it wasn’t part of our consciousness,” she said.

“After it was aired, it started a dialogue that just started flooding out.”

‘Palpable feeling’

Field said after the first night, there was “a palpable feeling” and people approached her on the street.

“People would stop their cars, get out and come running over to me, and they were shaking,” she said.

“They were saying, ‘I can’t tell you how much this means to me,’ and I knew this was helping people to talk about things they weren’t able to talk about before.”

Field said the movie “changed the world” in a sense and credited Stern’s script for doing so.

Stern, in turn, had his own revelation.

“All of my scripts are autobiographical, as they reflect what has happened to me,” he said.

“They reflect my own experience with a cold mother who never touched me with affection and a weak father, resulting in a certain kind of kid, which I was and am.

“So all my scripts were all about somebody needing to be saved, needing to be loved and the gift of unexpected love that comes to someone who wants it and needs it and never believes that it is going to happen.”

Field said she shared a “difficult” childhood, something she warned others not to repeat.

“You are a fool if you want to put your kid in show business,” she said.

“I’ve worked with a lot of children, and unless the parents are absolutely certifiable, I go to them and say, ‘Don’t do this to your child unless you are absolutely destitute and there are not other options.’

“Even then, I would tell them they need to be the ones who earn a living and to let the child have a childhood.”

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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.