What was it like, playing Gidget?
She was really an icon for young girls. Sally Field: I didn’t ever think of that. I’m sure she was an icon to me. Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think the most important thing in Gidget is that she had a father. I think it was this really turning point for me because I got to play a girl who had a father, and I didn’t have one. It was Don Porter, who was the most lovely, lovely, lovely loving man. And he was so terribly supportive to me in my awkwardness, in my newness. I didn’t read very well, because I realize now, I am like slightly dyslexic in a way, especially when I get nervous. We would do readings once a week for a while — when we had time — of the script. We’d sit down and do a reading, and I didn’t know a lot of the words, and I was so unsophisticated. I remember to this day some of the words I stumbled on, like “mundane” — I didn’t know what that word was. And “symbiotic,” I didn’t know what it was. Everybody got such a big kick out of me, ’cause I was 17, sort
