NBC Soap Star And Film Actress Dies At 87
Actress Shirley Anne Field is best known for her roles in films including “The Damned,” “Wild for Kicks,” “Peeping Tom” and “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.” She also acted on the NBC soap opera “Santa Barbara.”
Now, Field’s family has announced the sad news of her death on December 10, 2023. In a statement to the BBC, her family explained, “It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that Shirley Anne Field passed away peacefully on Sunday… surrounded by her family and friends. Shirley Anne will be greatly missed and remembered for her unbreakable spirit and her amazing legacy spanning more than five decades on stage and screen.” Field was 87 years old.
Field was born Anne Broomfield in 1936 in London. She was abandoned when she was a baby, and she spent part of her childhood in a children’s home. She was later fostered by two different families. As a child, she believed that she was an orphan, but that turned out not to be true. In 1979, she found her birth mother and learned that she had three sisters living in the United States in the state of Georgia.
Field paid her way through acting school by working as a model. Her big break was when she was cast as the Beauty Queen in the film “The Entertainer” starring Sir Laurence Olivier. Besides film, Field also acted on stage.
In 2009, Field spoke about passing up her first opportunity to be in a Hollywood film. She explained, “I finally had a chance to go to Hollywood and become a worldwide name. It was the stuff dreams are made of, but I didn’t get to enjoy it like I should have.” She added, “When I arrived, I was so panicked and tired and the sun was just too yellow and the orange juice too orange. It was very stressful, and I had a headache all the time.”
The film she passed up was John Schlesinger’s “A Kind of Loving.”
Field married race car driver Charles Crichton-Stuart in 1967, but their marriage ended in divorce in the ’70s. They had a daughter named Nicola.
In an interview in 2012, Field explained how acting changed her life for the better. She said, “I didn’t have a strong sense of identity when I was growing up because I’d lost it along with my family,” she said. “I hung on and the film industry literally saved me from despair because they all accepted me.”
