Sally Field Was 'Flattered' Burt Reynolds Called Her the 'Love of My Life': He Was 'Complicated'

Sally Field is opening up about her turbulent relationship with film icon Burt Reynolds leading up to the release of her memoir.

A part of Field’s sit-down interview with Diane Sawyer aired on Monday’s Good Morning America in which the actress revealed what her time with Reynolds — who died earlier this month at the age of 82 — was like.

“We had known each other about three days, four days at that point [during the filming of Smokey and the Bandit]. It was instantaneous, and four days felt like four years,” Field, 71, said.

“You can see it in our faces. We were sort of, you know, deeply entangled,” she told Sawyer. “That nature of it wasn’t just, ‘Oh, this is a love affair.’ There was some ingredient between us having to do with my caretaking and him needing to be taken care of.”

Reynolds and Field were together from 1977 until their breakup nearly five years later.

The actor told Vanity Fair in November 2015 that he never got over Field, calling her the “love of my life.”

“I was always flattered when he said that,” Field told Sawyer. “But he was a complicated man.”

Field is promoting her new memoir In Pieces in which she touches on the relationship she had with Reynolds.

The actress told The New York Times in an interview published last week that she was “glad” Reynolds wouldn’t be able to read her book.

“This would hurt him,” Field said. “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.”

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“I did not want to hurt him any further,” she added.

On writing the book, which includes memories of their time together, the actress said she was “flooded with feelings and nostalgia” about him.

When asked about her relationship with Reynolds, Field described it to the NYT as “confusing and complicated, and not without loving and caring, but really complicated and hurtful to me.”

In Pieces is out on Sept. 18.