Quote: Nora & Sarah (Season 4, Episode 13)

Nora: Are you spying on him again?
Sarah: Well, googling is not spying. It's social networking

Run Baby Run

Quote: Nora (Season 4, Episode 10)

Nora: [to Justin] Sometimes the things you are most afraid of are the things that make you the happiest.

Newlyweds

Quote: Nora (Season 4, Episode 8)

Nora: This is the step where my son Justin split his head open when he was wasted out of his mind. Out there is the swimming pool where my husband drowned on my daughter's birthday. Up there in the very first bedroom is where I'm nursing Kitty through chemo. It's the very same bedroom that Sarah stayed in when she was going through her divorce. In there is the living room where my son Kevin married his partner Scotty. So this is the box I live in. It's not med school but it's not playing it safe either.

Nora, The Wine Festival

Quote: Nora (Season 4, Episode 7)

Nora: The fear of losing control is dangerous as the disease itself. Fear keeps us doubting instead of hoping. Looking down instead of up

Nora, The Wig Party

Quote: Nora (Season 4, Episode 7)

Nora: Kitty, everyone who loves you - when they look at you, all they see is you

 Nora, The Wig Party

Quote: Robert & Nora (Season 4 Episode 3)

Robert [talking about Kitty being sick]: I just can't imagine what it would be like if it were one of my kids.

Nora: Well, you would probably fight like hell with their spouse, too.

Robert: I don't want to fight.

Nora: Good. Because I think we're gonna need each other

Robert & Nora, Almost Normal

Quote: Nora & Scotty (Season 4, Episode 2)

Nora: Scotty what's going on with all this baby stuff? What are you feeling? Why are you so afraid?

Scotty: Oh, I don't know... my mother, the things I grew up hearing. I mean two gay dads ... if it's a boy who's gonna teach him to bait a hook?

Nora & Scotty, Breaking The News

Quote: Nora (Season 4 Episode 1)

"From the minute my kids were born all I did was worry about them. I thought surely this will stop when they get older but no. What I worry about has changed but I'm still worrying. And what good has all this worrying done? None. With or without it my kids are doing just fine. They're happy and they're fine. I just need to learn to relax. I deserve to be happy"

Nora Walker, The Road Ahead

Sally Field

Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American actress. She became a household name at the age of 20 as Sister Bertrille in the 1960s sitcom The Flying Nun. She has won two Oscars: one for Norma Rae in 1979, and another for Places in the Heart in 1984.

More recently, Field stars as Nora Holden Walker on the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, currently airing its third season, as the Walker family matriarch.

Sally Field was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Maggie, an actress, and Richard Dryden Field, who worked in sales. Her parents divorced in 1950 and her mother subsequently remarried to actor and stuntman Jock Mahoney.

She attended Portola Middle School, then Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California where she was a cheerleader. Among her classmates were famed financier Michael Milken, fellow actress Cindy Williams (of Laverne and Shirley fame) and Michael Ovitz of CAA and Walt Disney Studios fame.

Field got her start on television as the boy-struck surfer girl in the mid-1960s surf culture sitcom series, Gidget. She went on to star in her best-known television role as Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun. In an interview included on the DVD release of The Flying Nun, she said that she would have preferred to continue playing Gidget. While starring on The Flying Nun, Sally tried her hand at singing, releasing an album on Colgems Records in 1967. The same year, she cracked the Billboard Hot 100 with one single, Felicidad. Later, she starred opposite John Davidson in a short-lived series called The Girl with Something Extra.

She made several guest appearances, including a recurring role on the western comedy Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel (with whom she had worked on Gidget) and Ben Murphy, and the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episode, Whisper.

Having played mostly comedic characters on television, Field had a difficult time being cast in dramatic roles.She studied with famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who had previously helped Marilyn Monroe go beyond the "bimbo" roles with which her career had begun.

Soon afterward, Field landed the title role in the 1976 TV film Sybil, the first of two films based on the book written by Flora Rheta Schreiber. Field's dramatic portrayal of Sybil, a young woman afflicted with multiple personality disorder, in the TV film not only garnered her an Emmy Award in 1977 but also enabled her to break through the typecasting she had experienced from her television sitcom roles.

Field enjoyed a large amount of critical and commercial success in movies, particularly in the 1980s. In 1977, she co-starred with Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed in that year's #2 grossing film, Smokey and the Bandit.

In 1979, she played a union organizer in Norma Rae, a successful film that established her status as a dramatic actress. Vincent Canby, in his review of the film for the New York Times, praised Sally, saying, "Norma Rae is a seriously concerned contemporary drama, illuminated by some very good performances and one, Miss Field's, that is spectacular." She won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1981, Field played a prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set comedy Back Roads, which received middling reviews and grossed $11 million at the box office.

She won another Academy Award in 1985 for her starring role in Places in the Heart. Her gushing acceptance speech is well-remembered for its earnestness. Sally said, "I haven't had an orthodox career, and I've wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn't feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" The line ending in "...I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!" is often misquoted as simply "You like me, you really like me!" which has subsequently been the subject of many parodies. (Field parodied the line herself in a commercial. Also in 1985, she co-starred with James Garner in Murphy's Romance. In A&E's biography of Garner, Sally reported that her on-screen kiss with Garner was the best cinematic kiss she had ever had.

Field appeared on the cover of the March 1986 issue of Playboy magazine – she was the interview subject in that month's issue. She did not appear as a pictorial subject inside the magazine, although she did wear the classic leotard and bunny ears "Bunny Outfit" on the cover.

For her role as the matriarch, M'Lynn, in the film version of Steel Magnolias (1989), Sally was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. She has had supporting roles in other movies, including Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) in which she played the wife of Robin Williams and the love interest of Pierce Brosnan, followed by the role of Forrest's mother in Forrest Gump (1994). She is only 10 years older than Tom Hanks, with whom she had co-starred six years earlier in Punchline.

On television, Field had a recurring role on ER in the 2000–2001 season as Dr. Abby Lockhart's mother Maggie, who is struggling to cope with bipolar disorder, a role for which she won an Emmy Award in 2001. After her critically acclaimed stint on the show, she returned to the role in 2003 and 2006. She also starred in the very short-lived 2002 series The Court.

Field has also ventured into the realm of directing. Her first directorial stint was for the television film, The Christmas Tree (1996). She also directed the feature film Beautiful (2000), as well as an episode of the TV mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon (1998).

Field was a late addition to the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters, which debuted in September 2006. In the show's pilot, the role of matriarch Nora Walker had been played by actress Betty Buckley. However, the producers of the show decided to take the character of Nora in another direction, and Field was cast in the role. She won the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in her role as Nora Walker.

Field recently had a voice role as Marina del Ray, the villain in Disney's The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, which was released in August 2008.

Currently, Field can be seen on television as the compensated spokesperson for Roche Laboratories' postmenopausal osteoporosis treatment medication, Boniva.

During her acceptance speech for her 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Field made an anti-war statement: "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place!" Though the crowd present at the Emmy awards heard it, the viewers at home only heard "if mothers ruled the world there would be no", due to the ABC censoring the rest of the statement. That decision and the statement made much controversy and was even voted in a private poll the biggest controversy of 2007. She has also played in the film Not Witout My Daughter which was also a big hit.

In the 2008 presidential election, she supported Hillary Clinton in her bid for the Democratic Nomination.

Field married Steven Craig in 1968. The couple had two sons, Peter Craig, a novelist, and Eli, an actor and director. They divorced in 1975.

In 1976, Field began a live-in relationship with Major Daniel M. Yoder, USAF. Their relationship ended in 1978.

Field was romantically involved with Burt Reynolds for many years, during which time they co-starred in several movies, including Smokey and the Bandit, Smokey and the Bandit II, and The End.

In 1984, she married film producer Alan Greisman. They had one son, Sam. Field and Greisman divorced in 1993.

On October 29, 1988, she and her family survived a crash after their charter plane lost power on takeoff.

Nora Walker

Nora is the matriarch of the Walker family. She has five children; Sarah, Kitty, Tommy, Kevin, and Justin. She has a brother Saul and has a difficult relationship with her mother, Ida. She has one daughter-in-law, Julia Walker (married to Tommy) and two sons-in-law Robert McCallister (married to Kitty) and Scotty Wandell (married to Kevin). Nora also has five grandchildren; Sarah's children Paige and Cooper, Tommy's twins William (deceased) and Elizabeth, and Kitty's adopted son Evan.

In the first episode Nora's husband, William, dies of a heart attack. She later learned about his long term affair and illegitimate daughter with his mistress, Holly. Nora slowly learns to accept this secret daughter, and meanwhile deals with the pain and joys of her own five children.

We later see that Nora has slowly moved on from William's death and started dating again. She is given the chance to move away from Pasadena but her love for her five children keeps her from going.

Nora: David, please don't be a stranger. I don't want you to feel every time you come here you're required to nail something. I didn't say that right, did I?

Nora: [To Justin after he overdosed on drugs] Go upstairs, lay down. When you feel better, then I'll tear your head off. I promise.

Nora: Where did they hide the booze? Tell me, really, I'm not joking.
Saul: Nora, if I knew where it was I'd be drunk by now.

Nora: This is not a class. You're asking me out. Is this because I wouldn't go out on a date with you? If it is mister, let me tell you this is sexual harassment and I don't plan to take that lying down.

Nora: School sucks! I am going to make myself a huge chocolate sundae, eat the whole thing, and then if I don’t feel better after that, then I will drop out too, right after I stick my finger down my throat.

Nora: What the hell are we watching?
Kevin: Meercats.
Nora: These meercats are wearing no clothes, give me the clicker.
Kevin: Fine, but no cooking programs.

Nora: You're going to Wicked for the fifth time? With Justin?
Kevin: Sixth time actually and I know he hates musicals but after Wicked everything will change!

Nora: Do you know one of the most important Jewish principles?
Paige: Bagles on Sunday?

Kitty: Mom! What are you doing?
Nora: Nothing. I just got here and saw Justin lurking.
Justin: I wasn't lurking.
Nora: Then why didn't you go in?
Justin: Kitty was yelling at the senator.

Kitty: He did love you though.
Nora: He didn't give up anything to do it. What kind of love is that?