Sally Field says Oscars speech has been misunderstood

Sally Field insists one of the most quoted speeches in Oscar history has been misunderstood for decades.

The two-time Oscar winner, 79, revisited the moment in 1985 when she declared during her Academy Awards acceptance speech: "You like me, you really like me".

Field revisited the moment during an interview with People while promoting her new Netflix drama Remarkably Bright Creatures. 

The actress won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as widowed Texas farmer Edna Spalding in Places in the Heart, five years after first taking home the prize for Norma Rae. 

Her speech at that year's Oscars quickly entered Hollywood folklore and has since been parodied across television, film and pop culture, becoming one of the most enduring moments in the event's history. 

But Field says the line has repeatedly been quoted incorrectly.

"The first time I won for Norma, it was so unexpected. I had come out of nowhere," she said.

"So I was so numb when I won. I don't remember walking up on the stage. I didn't feel any of it."

By the time she returned to the Oscars stage in 1985, she wanted to fully absorb the experience after years of struggling for artistic recognition in Hollywood.

"I had to have a moment of allowing myself to feel that I had done something, that I had conquered something that was so hard for me to do," she said.

"It doesn't mean that it wouldn't continue to need to be conquered on a daily basis for the work to keep on getting better, to keep understanding it on a different level."

Field told the audience: "This means so much more to me this time. I don't know why. I think the first time I hardly felt it because it was all so new".

After thanking her family and colleagues, she delivered the line that would later become immortalised in entertainment culture.

"But I want to say thank you to you. 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!"

Field told People she had "wanted to take this moment and see it and own it for myself".

"That for this one minute in time – maybe never again – you like me, you really like me. And that's what I said."

"It became this whole (thing), but the reality is that I was talking to myself."

The actress is currently starring in Remarkably Bright Creatures, a Netflix adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt's bestselling novel. 

Field plays Tova, a widow who develops an unlikely connection with an octopus named Marcellus while working at an aquarium and helping a troubled young man played by Lewis Pullman.

Speaking about the novel, Field said it was "a lovely, lovely little book about healing, about family, and an homage to sea creatures".