(applause)
- When we met, almost 50 years ago,
the world already knew Sally Field.
Now Sally and I had been
friends all that time
and she has been an
important part of my family,
but we'd never actually worked together
in this business we so dearly love.
And then about 15 years ago,
I began work on a film
about Abraham Lincoln
and we had the extraordinary
Daniel Day-Lewis to play the president
but I hesitated about casting
Sally as Mary Todd Lincoln,
or Molly, as Lincoln liked to call her.
So when I expressed this to Sally
who I'd been asking about
the role, she said to me,
"Steven, you are wrong."
And I don't hear this very often.
(audience laughing)
Maybe from my wife Kate
who when I got home,
said the same thing to me
that Sally had just said that
day, "Steven you're wrong."
So the next day Sally
calls me and she says,
"I've never asked you for anything
"but I'm asking you now, just test me."
She didn't ask for the part,
she asked for the chance.
Daniel Day-Lewis flew all
the way out to Los Angeles
to do this test with her.
And then we did some improvisational work
and when it ended, Daniel and I
just couldn't contain ourselves.
What we had experienced was nothing less
than the reincarnation of Molly Lincoln.
So we tried to calculate
how long her drive home
would take her so we could
call the old fashioned way.
You know like on your hard-line telephone,
that some of us still have?
Well so the second she
walked through the door,
the timing worked beautifully,
she picked up the phone,
she's out of breath, and together we said,
"Would you be our Molly?"
And in that moment I
was so incredibly proud
of my long time friend,
and my new work partner
but most of all I have never been so proud
to have been proven so wrong.
I love you Sally!
(applause)
