Burt Reynolds died just weeks before the release of Sally Field's upcoming memoir, "In Pieces," and the actress is "glad" he won't be reading it.
After his death, Field released a statement saying her years with Reynolds "never leave my mind," adding that he "will be in my history and my heart, for as long as I live." That being said, she knows he probably wouldn't have liked what she had to say about him in her new book.
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View Story"This would hurt him," she told the New York Times. "I felt glad that he wasn't going to read it, he wasn't going to be asked about it, and he wasn't going to have to defend himself or lash out, which he probably would have. I did not want to hurt him any further."
Recalling their time together, she said it was "confusing and complicated, and not without loving and caring, but really complicated and hurtful to me." In the book, she also wrote that during filming of "Smokey and the Bandit," Reynolds used Percodan, Valium and barbiturates and "sometimes received mysterious injections to his chest."
According to the Times, Field said she was recreating her relationship with her abusive stepfather by being with Reynolds. "I was somehow exorcising something that needed to be exorcised," she said. "I was trying to make it work this time."
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View StoryIn the book, she reportedly wrote about being sexually abused by her stepfather, Jock Mahoney. "It would have been so much easier if I'd only felt one thing, if Jocko had been nothing but cruel and frightening. But he wasn't," she wrote. "He could be magical, the Pied Piper with our family as his entranced followers."
"I felt both a child, helpless, and not a child. Powerful. This was power," she added of the abuse, which continued until she was 14. "And I owned it. But I wanted to be a child —- and yet."
Field also revealed in the book that she got an abortion in Tijuana when she was 17 and alleged she kissed director Bob Rafelson to help secure a role in the 1976 movie "Stay Hungry."
According to Field, Rafelson told her, "I can't hire anyone who doesn't kiss good enough," so she did. "It must have been good enough," she added. Rafelson categorically denied the story.
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View StoryRecalling her relationship with songwriter Jimmy Webb, Field also writes about an alleged incident in 1968 when she woke up to find him "on top of me, grinding away to another melody" after smoking hash together. She added she didn't think he was acting "with malicious intent," but that she "felt he was stoned out of his mind."
Webb denied her allegations to the Times as well, saying he only has "great memories of our times together and great respect for Sally." He added that he chose not to write about her in his book, "because I didn't want to tarnish her Gidget image with our stories of drugs and sex."
Field's memoir, "In Pieces," releases September 18.