Sally Field was among the family and friends to attend Burt Reynolds’ private funeral service in Florida on Wednesday.
The 71-year-old actress discreetly entered the Family Church in West Palm Beach through a side door for the funeral of her Smokey and the Bandit co-star and former flame.
The movie legend’s niece Nancy Lee Brown Hess was also spotted at the service, as well as a mourner wearing a B.L Stryker jacket – an American detective drama in which Reynolds starred in the lead role.
Mourners hugged each other tightly in the aisles of the church as the service got underway.
Sally Field discreetly entered the Family Church in West Palm Beach, Florida through a side door (above) on Wednesday for Burt Reynolds’ funeral
Sally Field was among the family and friends to attend Burt Reynolds’ private funeral service in West Palm Beach. They are pictured above together in 1977
The eulogy was delivered by Todd Vittum – Reynolds’ assistant and executive director of the Burt Reyolds Institute.
Reynolds died aged 82 on September 6 after suffering a heart attack.
Field’s attendance at her ex-boyfriend’s funeral comes after her new memoir, In Pieces, revealed several shocking details about their five-year relationship.
She wrote that Reynolds was controlling, jealous and belittling during their stormy relationship and even hinted that he was physically abusive to her.
The actress writes that when she tried to assert herself, her Smokey and the Bandit co-star ‘tightened his grip, sometimes literally’, though she does not elaborate further.
Field said that from the first time they met, Reynolds began to ‘housebreak’ her, telling her ‘what was allowed and what was not’. He only liked to talk about himself and used to ‘constantly snap as if I’d piddled on the floor’, according to her new book.
Mourners hugged each other tightly in the aisles of the church as the service got underway
Reynolds (above in March) died aged 82 on September 6 after suffering a heart attack. His funeral was held at the Family Church in West Palm Beach, Florida on Wednesday
Reynolds belittled Field’s acting career and was so jealous that whenever they saw a man Field knew he would pinch her face, demanding to know who he was.
The disturbing effect on Field was that she ‘eliminated most of me, becoming a familiar, shadowy version of myself, locked behind my eyes, unable to speak’, she writes.
Field has previously said that she is glad Reynolds was not alive to read her memoir.
She says in her memoir that her relationship with Reynolds was a replay of that with her stepfather, who sexually abused her from the when she was around six years old to 14.
Field describes how being with Reynolds was ‘exorcising something that needed to be exorcised’ but she was ‘trying to make it work this time’.
The eulogy was delivered by Todd Vittum – Reynolds’ assistant and executive director of the Burt Reyolds Institute
The private service was held at the Family Church in West Palm Beach, Florida
The actress writes that from the beginning Reynolds was presumptuous and arrogant, introducing himself as ‘Burt Reynolds, movie star’ when he called her.
It was 1976 and he had asked her to star in Smokey and the Bandit; she had already found fame with films like Gidget and Stay Hungry, while Reynolds was the biggest star in the world at the time, thanks to films like Deliverance.
Field writes she did not understand why Reynolds wanted her in the film because she was not his typical leading lady and she thought that the ‘script stinks’.
But his motives became clear when, to her surprise, he announced they were going on a date for their first meeting.
Field writes: ‘By the time we met, the weight of his stardom had become a way for Burt to control everyone around him, and from the moment I walked through the door, it was a way to control me. We were a perfect match of flaws’.
Their affair was ‘instantaneous and intense’, Field writes.
Field’s attendance at her ex-boyfriend’s funeral comes after her new memoir, In Pieces, revealed several shocking details about their five-year relationship. They are pictured above on the set of Hooper in 1978