Did ‘Smokey and the Bandit’s Sally Field and Burt Reynolds date?

It has been decades since Smokey and the Bandit first came out in 1977, but nothing has dampened its status as an iconic film, undoed the fact that the attempts to wring out every possible penny from the franchise was a mistake, or erased the story of Sally Field and Burt Reynolds.

On paper — especially when you read about it 40+ years later — Burt Reynolds and Sally Field’s on-and-off relationship throughout the late 70s and early 80s appears to be a simple story. Yes, they dated — even though their on-screen kisses tend to remind us of Marvel’s trying its hand at including an intimate scene in Eternals (though now the chance to fix it is gone).

How did Sally Field and Burt Reynolds meet?

Simple — the sets of the first Smokey and the Bandit brought the two stars together and ensured they stuck together for the next four films they starred in as well as the coming five years. But judging by the details about Reynolds and their relationship Field has voluntarily shared since his death, it is evident that the time they spent as a couple was ready to switch places with the word “tumultuous” in the dictionary.

Whether we focus on the revelation she made in her memoir, In Pieces, that the actor only managed to be important in her life for a while as she “didn’t speak to him for the last 30 years of his life” or remember the one time she called her on-screen kisses with Reynolds the worst in her career and highlighted the “lot of drooling,” The Amazing Spider-Man star definitely doesn’t have many fond memories of the time they spend together.

But according to Reynolds — at least based on his 2015 interview with Vanity Fair and his memoir, But Enough About Me — Sally Field was the “love of [his] life” and regretted the fact that he didn’t fight harder to save their relationship, which came to an end in 1982. Sounds heartbreaking, right? Well, Field doesn’t agree and her disagreement has been pretty vocal so far.

In an interview with Variety, she openly debunked his claims of undying love for her.

“He was not someone I could be around. He was just not good for me in any way. And he had somehow invented in his rethinking of everything that I was more important to him than he had thought, but I wasn’t. He just wanted to have the thing he didn’t have. I just didn’t want to deal with that.”

If this didn’t hint at a toxic relationship, Field’s recent revelation about how her then-boyfriend reacted to her nomination for Norma Rae ahead of the 52nd Oscars confirms beyond any doubt. In Dave Karger’s new book 50 Oscar Nights, the actress has revealed (via People) that Reynolds disliked the hype she was receiving, was “not a nice guy around [her],” refused to go to the ceremony as her date, and didn’t want her to attend it either.

“He said, ‘You don’t think you’re going to win anything, do you?’”

This was in 1980, when Field nabbed the golden statue, her first Academy Award win. The two dated on and off for the next two years, before ending things permanently, which was followed by the actress finding love in producer Alan Greisman and Reynolds eventually marrying actress Loni Anderson.