this is "nightline." >> tonight, confirmation controversy. supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh and his accuser called to pubically testify next week on the stunning sexual assault allegations. kavanaugh emphatically denying the decades old claim. his accuser revealing her identity. how the allegations could put kavanaugh's confirmation in doubt. plus, inpieces. sally field, the all-american girl next door. >> you see me, gidget. >> who flew into our hearts. >> now her stunning new memoir. the actress opening up to diane sawyer in an exclusive tv interview, shedding light on a dark past, secrets she kept hidden and the lingering question, what do her mother

now? but first the "nightline 5. "why the ♪ together we stand, divided we fall ♪ ♪ get on the ball and work together ♪ ♪ come on, come on ♪ let's work together ♪ because together >> half of everything sold on amazon comes from small and medium businesses just like mine. ♪ >> make someone happy ♪ ♪ make someone smile

good evening. thank you for joining us. judge brett kavanaugh's supreme court seat may be in jeopardy. president trump's pick agreeing to pubically testify about decades old sexual assault allegations, and his accuser

also offering to face the scrutiny of that same senate panel. here's abc's terry moran. >> reporter: it was a bombshell that rocked washington. >> first we want to begin with that allegation against supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. >> president trump's supreme court nominee in turmoil. >> supreme court nominee judge brett kavanaugh is headed back to capitol hill next week to testify about those explosive sexual assault allegations and the woman who is accusing him will likely be there, too. >> judge kavanaugh is one of the finest people that i've ever known. never had even a little blemish on his record, but with all of that being said, we want to go through the process. >> reporter: the president defending his nominee today as democrats and even a growing number of republicans raise concerns and call for a delay in the nomination process days before a key vote. >> obviously if judge kavanaugh has lied about what happened, that would be disqualifying.

>> i believe professor ford. i think she's credible, and i think when the investigation is finished, i think had a majority of senators will find her credible. >> judge kavanaugh's confirmation today is in doubt, but it's not yet over. >> reporter: over the weekend the accuser christine blasey ford stepped forward in a "washington post" interview alleging kavanaugh assaulted her while they were in high school about 35 years ago. kavanaugh categorically denies this happened. this is a picture of ford from around the time she alleges she was assaulted. >> she clearly considers this an attempted rape. >> ford says she didn't know kavanaugh well when they attended a party as teenagers back in the 1980s. ford claims kavanaugh and a friend when stumbling drunk when they corralled her in a bedroom and turned on loud music and said kavanaugh's friend watched as the now supreme court nominee pinned her to a bed and groped her. when she tried to scream, she says kavanaugh put his hand over

her mouth according to twroesht. he was trying to attack me and remove my clothing and i thought he might inadvertently kill me. "the post" reports ford told a marriage therapist and her husband decades later about the incident in 2012. it's not confirmed if she will be in front of the committee on monday, but her lawyer said she is willing to testify. >> she's willing to do whatever it takes to get her story forth. she has taken a polygraph. she's a credible person. these are serious allegations, and they should be addressed. >> reporter: judge kavanaugh declaring in a statement today this is a completely false allegations. i've never done anything like what the accuser describes to her or to anyone because this never happened. i had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself yesterday. ford is now a professor at palo alto university, a work in clinical psychology is wildly published in academic journals. at the end of july she wrote a letter to senator dianne feinstein detailing her storer

and insisted on remaining anonymous. five days ago feinstein referred the case to the fbi, the same day ford's story began to leak. >> there was a great deal of support that came her way, but she did receive a lot of very vicious sexually violent e-mails from total strangers. >> there's going to be no perfect way to do this, and what i hope is that this doesn't become a circus. judge kavanaugh deserves better, the professor deserves better than that. >> reporter: during his confirmation hearings he was asked about his time in high school. >> did you ever get in trouble in high school, more of a john boy walton type or ferris buhler type? >> worked hard in school. had a lot of friends. talked a lot about my friends. >> you left out the trouble part. >> right, that's encompassed under the friends, i think. >> reporter: a softball question that now seems weirdly on point, ap toic he'll likely face again during monday's testimony. >> do you wear spo tell the

truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you god. >> i do. >> reporter: for many this brings back echoes of the anita hill hearings claiming the judge harassed her when they worked together in the 1980s. thomas denies the claimed and he went on to be confirmed. >> the dismissive and even mocking tone that a lot of committee members took towards anita hill was one of the things most people remembered about those hearings. >> are you a scorned woman? >> no. >> do you have a militant attitude relevant to the area of civil rights? >> no, i don't have a militant attitude. >> i think as much as the witnesses, everyone will be watching, i'll certainly be watching, both the questions and the demeanor of the members of the committee. >> right now the biggest problem republicans have in holding on to the congress is among women. the president's approval ratings are terrible among women, and

suburban women are turning off the republican party. the republicans cannot afford to appear to be hostile toward, insulting toward, denigrating of a woman who is making a serious accusation. >> reporter: we may see how all that plays out in one week. for "nightline," i'm terry moran reporting from washington. >> next, diane sawyer with actress sally field's powerful new memoir. her childhood pain and perseverance, an illuminating exclusive tv interview. erview. keep those shrimp comin'! endless shrimp is back at red lobster. with all the shrimp you want, any way you want them. try delicious creations like new crunchy fiesta shrimp tortilla chip crusted then topped with a creamy blend of three cheeses and finished with pico de gallo. and there's new sesame-ginger shrimp. grilled and drizzled with savory soy-ginger sauce and sprinkled with asian seasoning. and don't forget the favorites you love, like garlic shrimp scampi! but endless shrimp won't last endlessly, so hurry in.

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(music throughout) "nightline" continues with diane sawyer and the sally field

interview. >> it is hard to imagine a sunnier american face. >> 3 sack. >> you're looking at a tape from 54 years ago, an unknown teenager in a kind of audition. >> when i go to the beach, unless there's boys there, or my boyfriend, then it's not any fun just by myself. >> sally field, remembering that moment she won the part of the impossibly innocent girl next door gidget. >> you see people you meet, gidget. >> and the next thing we know she's a 20-year-old strapped into a harness. >> anyway, i'm not going to give up. >> we can see the wires. >> we really can. >> oh, gee, the illusion is ruined. "the flying nun" on tv made her a household name, but during the next 50 years she would blaze across the big screen with startling truth and power >> can yell. >> sometimes hilarious. >> the whole time, the whole

time, the whole time! >> then stepping out of history. >> will they ever know what show went through for him? >> sometimes simply shattering. >> why? why? >> but it's only today at the age of 71 that she's finally ready to talk about the truth of her life off screen. show has written a book putting together the pieces. >> to uncover what i had avoided seeing all my life. >> which was? >> boy, that's -- >> memories too painful. >> memories that would drop you bone by bone, you know, that would just floor you. >> for every child, the first great mystery is your own family. hers includes a beautiful mother she idolized. she's written she glowed like honey in a glass jar. incredibly beautiful. >> yeah, yeah. >> incredibly luminous.

>> mm-hmm, truly, truly was. >> but she was also the mother who was enthralled by a man who became sally's step dad, stuntman and acor. 6'4" jacco mahoney. she was only 4 or 5 years old when her stepfather would call her up to the bedroom. he had back pain. he wanted her to walk on his aching muscles. >> i was always tiny, a little person, even littlier than i am now, that's true, and -- and from the get-go, i was like a -- a kind of toy. he was a stunt man so he was always sore and injured and wounded, and i was so little that it was almost like having a dance floor on this huge big back, and then that -- it -- that grew. sal, come walk on my back. and so i did.

>> and not just his back? >> yeah. >> you can read the details of what happened in the book. her story of the frightening escalating exploitation of a little girl. she says the abuse continued until her early teens. >> you know, child abuse, sexual child abuse, any child abuse, but sexual child abuse, it -- i think one of the reasons it is at least my point of view, it's so damaging is because it's so complicated. there isn't just one feeling. >> one of the things that we always hear is how early shame sets in. >> oh, yeah, mm-hmm. >> and how early the doubt of your complicity. >> oh, yeah. >> somehow sets in. >> mm-hmm, mm-hmm, and how then do you grow up and have any sort understanding of what healthy sexuality is, or how is it not

always connected to danger? it's always connected to danger, shame and loss. >> loss? >> well, kind of the loss of self. >> the secrets, the loneliness, not to mention the corrosive question. how much did her beautiful mother now? it will take her decades to ask. so look once again at the face of the young tv star who seems the embodiment of innocence and joy. she writes about depression, uncontrollable rage, binge eating and the cure for the little nun who put on extra pounds. someone gave you pills? >> yeah. >> they gave me, you know, these big green bombers. >> dexadrine. >> dexadrine, hot damn summer in the city. boy oh, boy. this is fun. cotton mouth and you're high as a kite and just --

>> she says she managed to stop the bills after just a few months, but the flying nun had also made her a joke in the serious acting community she worshipped. she's asked to go to the golden globes, but they make her fly in, and by the way, it's a homemade dress. >> my mom made the dress like the night before. i was wearing a pink culotte outfit and my hair was in ringlets. i mean, what on earth was i thinking? not much clearly. flying across the coconut grove and look down at everyone i wanted to know and be, and i had to fly into the arms of john wayne. >> john wayne. >> as the years went by she would have to fight for so many of those roles we love. the ones who won her two oscars. at the same time she married and has three children she adores, but there were also two divorces

and relationships she says still reflect a little girl with a cracked heart. what have you learned about yourself and men? >> not much. i really don't -- i don't -- i have not figured that out. >> like the romance almost 40 years ago. 1977, roguish superstar burt reynolds chose her for his girl in "smokey and the bandit." the movie comes up on the screen as the roxie cinema tribeca. >> i was so good. you would have loved me. >> we had known each other about three days, four days at that point. it was instantaneous, and four days felt like four years so you can see it in our faces, you know. we were sort of deeply entangled. and the nature of it wasn't

just, you know, oh, this is a love affair. something, you know, there was some ingredient between us having to do with my caretaking and him needing to be taken care of. >> in the book she writes about hispanic attacks, hypoconned yeah, pills to soothe him. she says for a time she gave up a lot of what she wanted in an effort to try to make him happy. >> i think the only reason to write about better was to show -- he was an illustration of how i was replicating things in my childhood in a pattern that i couldn't get out of. i only recognized love if i -- to be loved i had to disappear. >> she says she finally managed to leave him in part because what have she learned from the role "norma rae," the true story of a woman who had the courage to stand up for herself.

>> i started this, and i'm going to finish it. >> piece by piece, she says holding on to your own strike. at one point her stef father remarried with a different family and asked her for money. and you give it to him? >> sure, yeah, yeah. >> and she told me she thinks she should have showed up for his stunt man award before he died. >> should have done it because of why? >> i don't know. because i -- it was a weird thing to say. because i won. i won. we were in some weird battle, and that's just the truth and i won. >> and finally one more piece of her life to face down. sally field was in her 60s when she gathered the nerve to ask her aging mother that lacerating

question. did you know what he was doing? >> she was very frail and -- and passion away. i have the conversation with her, yeah. >> they were in the kitchen. her mother trembled confessing that decades ago her stepfather had mentioned one event. >> that he had done something and he felt terrible and he wanted her forgiveness. and she said something pretty awful, pretty graphic that he had said which, you know what, went whoa. for me to hear that and to know that that was true and for me to say to her, mother, it wasn't just one moment in my life, an indiscretion on his part. it was my whole life. it was my whole childhood. >> and the next morning her frail mother gives her the only

thing she can, her anguish, her regret, promising love in this life and after. >> she yanked the door woep with the strength i didn't think she still had and grabbed me and she said you will never be alone in this again. i let you down. >> sally field said she learned we all learn inside imperfect lives and the triumph is to choose hope and hold on. >> life is never one thing. it is a lifetime of work and struggle and success and failure, and the times when you feel absolutely slammed to the ground with defeat or disappointment or loss just hopeless. it's up to you to be in pain and

feel it and stand up and move again. >> inpieces is o"in pieces" is . our thanks to diane sawyer. we'll be right back. right back. ( ♪ ) it's the details that make the difference. only botox® cosmetic is fda approved to temporarily make frown lines, crow's feet and forehead lines look better.

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. and finally tonight, it was sally field who said you must do the best you can with what you've got, and sometimes magic strikes. thank you for watching "nightline" and thanks for the company, america. good night. ht.

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