Oscar Winner Says She Couldn’t Understand a Single Word Her Co-Star Said

Mario Anzuoni/ReutersOscar-winning actor Sally Field has admitted that she could barely comprehend what Hollywood icon Robert Mitchum was saying to her when the pair appeared in a movie together. In an interview on the Talking Pictures podcast, Field, 79, recounted that one of her first acting roles was in the 1967 Western The Way West. She said she liked to spend time between takes alone, but sometimes Mitchum—the star of classics such as The Night of the Hunter (1955) and the original Cape Fear—would come up to talk to her. “Mitchum would sit with me, and I never could understand a single word he said,” Field said. “I don’t know if he was stoned or what, but I couldn’t string two words together. And I would go, ‘yeah, yeah,’ and [I’d laugh] and pretend I understood what he said.” Despite the lack of clear communication, Field said Mitchum made her feel welcome on set when her film career was just starting out. “The only thing that I understood that he said to me—and then I thought, did I understand that right?—he said, ‘You know, you’re one of us.’ And I went, ‘Well, OK.’” Mitchum died in 1997 at 79.Read it at The Independent Read more at The Daily Beast.