She was presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2014, the National Medal of Arts in 2014, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2019, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2023.

She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for the NBC television film Sybil (1976).

Her film debut was as an extra in Moon Pilot (1962) followed by starring roles in The Way West (1967), Stay Hungry (1976), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Heroes (1977), The End (1978), and Hooper (1978).

Other notable roles include in Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Absence of Malice (1981), Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), Murphy's Romance (1985), Steel Magnolias (1989), Soapdish (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and Forrest Gump (1994).

She made her professional stage debut replacing Mercedes Ruehl in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?

Field returned to the stage after an absence of 15 years with the 2017 revival of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

[10] In an interview included on the Season One DVD release, Field said that she thoroughly enjoyed Gidget but hated The Flying Nun because she was not treated with respect by the show's directors.

[11][12] She made several guest television appearances through the mid-1970s, including a role on the Western Alias Smith and Jones, a popular series starring Gidget co-star Pete Duel.

[1][15][16] Soon after studying with Strasberg, Field landed the title role in the 1976 television film Sybil, based on the book by Flora Rheta Schreiber.

Her dramatic portrayal of a young woman afflicted with dissociative identity disorder earned her an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Special Program – Drama or Comedy in 1977[17] and enabled her to break through the typecasting of her sitcom work.

Vincent Canby, reviewing the film for The New York Times, wrote: "Norma Rae is a seriously concerned contemporary drama, illuminated by some very good performances and one, Miss Field's, that is spectacular.

"[19] For her role in Norma Rae, Field won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Actress.

[20] In 1981, she continued to change her image, playing a foul-mouthed prostitute opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the South-set film Back Roads.

Field's acceptance speech has since been both admired as earnest and parodied as excessive, mainly the line, "And I can't deny the fact that you like me...right now...you like me!

Field's other 1990s films included Not Without My Daughter, a controversial thriller based on the real-life experience of Betty Mahmoody's escape from Iran with her daughter Mahtob; and Soapdish, a comedy in which she played a pampered soap-opera star and was joined by a cast that included Kevin Kline, Whoopi Goldberg, Cathy Moriarty, Elisabeth Shue, and Robert Downey Jr.

[30] In 1998, she directed the episode "The Original Wives' Club" of the critically acclaimed TV miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, also playing a minor role as Trudy, the wife of astronaut Gordon Cooper.

[32] However, the show's producers decided to take the character in another direction, and offered the part to Field, who won the 2007 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her performance.

[35] The same year, Field portrayed the titular character in Hello, My Name Is Doris, for which she was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in a Comedy.

[47] On October 29, 1988, at Aspen/Pitkin County Airport in Colorado, Field and three members of her family were in a private plane owned by media mogul Merv Griffin when it lost power and rejected takeoff, slamming into a parked aircraft.

Her diagnosis led her to create the "Rally with Sally for Bone Health" campaign[50] with support from Roche and GlaxoSmithKline that controversially co-promoted Boniva,[51][52] a bisphosphonate treatment for osteoporosis.

[53] In 2005, Field received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented in recognition of her lifetime of contributions to the arts as well as her dedication as a social activist.

[54][55] During her acceptance speech at the 2007 Emmy Awards, when she won for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Field said: "If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.

"[56] Fox Broadcasting Company, which aired the show, cut the sound and picture after the word "god" and did not return camera/sound to the stage until after Field finished talking.