Sally Field reflects on her decades-long career from “Gidget” to “Lincoln” in a speech for the SAG Life Achievement Award.

Accepting the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award at Sunday night’s SAG Awards, Sally Field recalled her decades-spanning career and her rise from 1960s sitcom star to respected veteran actor.

Field accepted the award from Andrew Garfield, who performed with her The Amazing Spider-Man and its continuation. Garfield called her an “entertainment pioneer” who “dedicated her life to righteous advocacy off screen.”

“Sally is the epitome of great acting – inspired without fear of getting deep and raw and overflowing with empathy,” he said.

Taking the stage, Field shared that she’s been a part of projects that were “so good that I shook my hands when I first read them,” explaining that “they opened up and revealed parts of me that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.”

“I have flown cables and driven through the sea, driven horses, carts, trains and fast cars. I had multiple personalities. I worked in a textile factory, picking cotton. I was mrs. Doubtfire’s employer, Forrest Gump’s mother, Lincoln’s wife and Spider-Man’s aunt. I did scenes with 50 pound period dresses. I was fully clothed, half clothed and completely naked,” she said, calling over to Jeff Bridges and jokingly adding, “Huh, Jeff? You don’t know?”

She also recalled her first acting role in the ABC series in 1965 Gidgetwhich allowed her to join the Screen Actors Guild and eventually lead to her life as an actress.

“In the fall of 1964, I stood in front of a camera on an icy Malibu beach and said my first lines of dialogue as a professional actor,” she said. “I was 17, fresh out of high school. I didn’t have an agent and I was working under what was called the Taft Hartley Act. A few months later this show was taped and suddenly I was the star of a TV series and joined the Screen Actors Guild. I remember putting this little paper card so brightly in my wallet, quietly excited to call myself an actor. I first discovered this level when I was 12 years old, in seventh grade. And after that I never left the acting department.”

She continued, “It was the only place where I could really be myself, more than anywhere else once I was off the stage. I felt shy and cautious and hidden. I would think and think about everything before I could say or do. But on stage I never knew what I’d say or do. I’d surprise myself. I didn’t seek applause or attention, although sometimes that’s nice. Anyway, it was never about hiding behind not the characters of others. Acting has always been about finding those few precious moments when I feel completely, absolutely, sometimes dangerously, alive. So the task has always been to find a way there – to get to work, to fight my way there if necessary. In the 60’s and 70’s I struggled to break out of the situation comedy box and it took a ferocity I didn’t know I had. But honestly, I was a little white girl with a pug nose born in Pasadena, Calif. And while I’m in here tonight Looking around the room, I know that my struggle, tough as it was, was easy compared to some of yours.

While her journey, like that of the other actors she spoke to, may not have been easy, Field explained that “it’s just overrated.”