Sally Field gave Stephen Colbert a full-on kiss when she made her entrance on Wednesday’s “The Late Show” to promote her new film, “Hello, My Name is Doris.”
“If Helen Mirren did it, why can’t I?” Field told Colbert. The previous evening, Mirren gave the late-night host a big smooch.
“You won’t get an argument from me,” said Colbert. “This job is getting better and better every day.”
Colbert told Field he’s been in love with her since he was a little kid.
Later she may have deflated his ego when she said, “I’ve been kissing guys on the screen for the last 53 years of my life. What’s the big deal? A pair of lips is a pair of lips, huh?”
Sally Field Plays Office Drone in ‘Hello, My Name is Doris’
Earlier in the week, the two-time Oscar-winning star of “Norma Rae” and “Places in the Sun” talked up her new comedy-drama “Hello, My Name is Doris” at the Apple store in SoHo, accompanied by director Michael Showalter. The Field vehicle features the 69-year-old as a spinsterish, office drone that falls for a much younger co-worker (Max Greenfield).
In her zany clothes and big hair, Doris, an accountant, sits in her cubicle where she’s mostly ignored. When a hipster, 30-year-old starts working for the firm, Doris’s fantasy life takes over and she imagines her romantic feelings for him are reciprocated.
Key to Sally Field Character Was Creating ‘the Look’ – ‘Hello, My Name is Doris’
The director said creating Doris’s look, with her distinctive cat-shaped glasses and poufy hair, was key to her character. “This character is very shy and speaks to the world through what she wears when we first meet her,” said the director. “Her expression is in her clothing and her jewelry and her makeup and her hairdo. So we started with that and we basically imagined her as some sort of cross between Edie from ‘Grey Gardens’ and Iris Apfel.”
The movie was shot in three weeks with a $1 million budget. Doris’s costumes came from thrift shops and old movie wardrobe places. As for the big-hair, Field said the look was inspired by photographs of Bridget Bardot from 1952, except her hair was blond.
“Doris, to me, lived in her own world, and she never visualized that anyone from the outside world was going to look at her, since she was mainly ignored at work, so she just creates her own look of pleasing herself.”
Sally Field Talks Kissing Max Greenfield
On another track, someone asked Field what it was like kissing the dishy Max Greenfield.
“I’ve been in this business for 53 years,” said Field. “I’m still stunned about the kiss I got from Paul Newman.” (Sydney Pollack’s film “Absence of Malice,” 1981.)
“He was one cute little fellow I’m telling you,” Field said of Greenfield. “But I kissed a lot of guys onscreen, young and old. He was just another set of lips, girls. Not that they weren’t attached to something worth looking at. But I just dug right in. But honestly, what’s the big deal?”
And Yup, Max Greenfield Was Into It
She added that Greenfield seemed into it. “He didn’t seem to be hesitant. Matter of fact, Michael would say, ‘Cut, cut, cut, cut, hello?’”
Field said she loved everything about Doris. “The script was not like anything I’d read or seen before,” she said, adding she was surprised that the press glommed onto the younger-man, older-woman aspect.
“That’s really not what it is. We had a lot of people say, ‘Oh are you a cougar?’ No because it’s really about so many things that relate to us, whether you’re an older woman or a younger guy. It has to do with just being isolated and not being able to move on into the next stage of your life. In this one little moment, something pulls her out of her cave she’s been in all of her life, and it really is about that movement to move on in your life.”
Asked if Doris reminded Field of any of the other working class characters she’d played, like Norma Rae, Field replied, “There is no comparison. This is very, very different territory than I’ve ever explored really. The only thing is sometimes the tiniest bit it reminds me of ‘Sybil,’ you know,” she laughed. “There was a moment where I’m Sybil, hearing little voices and going ‘Oh no, I’m Sybil, how are we going to get out of this?’ And so I was waltzing in that area, but other than that it’s brand new territory.”
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