>Sally Field
Accepting a Scary Mission
To direct "The Original Wives Club," the 11th of HBO's 12-part miniseries From the Earth to the Moon—and the only one to focus on the astronauts' wives (Sunday, May 10, at 8 p.m. ET)—executive producer Tom Hanks called on his friend (and Forrest Gump mama) Sally Field. Tapped last August as a last-minute fill-in, Field, 51, had only one previous directing credit (1996's The Christmas Tree) and says, "It was so terrifying to have no time to prep. But it was such a great group of people"—including Rita Wilson (Hanks's wife), Elizabeth Perkins and JoBeth Williams. She speaks bluntly about the NASA wives' public smiles belying their private torments. "The men were off having affairs," says Field, "and the women just had to shovel s—t." But the twice-divorced double Oscar winner seems content in her own life. "We're all fine," she says of her three sons, Peter, 28, Eli, 25, and Sam, 10. And, "No, I'm not dating anyone at the moment. I have not seen Burt [Reynolds] in gazillions of years." She wouldn't mind directing in Burt's old genre: action films. But the movie would have to be more than just "things going bang, because," she says, "bangs scare me."
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