Todd Field

William Todd Field (born February 24, 1964) is an American filmmaker and actor.

In 1980, Nelson and former New York Yankees all-star Jim Bouton sold the idea to the Wrigley Company.

Since that time more than a billion pouches have been sold worldwide.

A budding jazz musician, at the age of sixteen Field became a member of the Big Band at Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon.

Headed by Larry McVey, the band had become a proving-ground and regular stop for Stan Kenton and Mel Tormé when they were looking for new players.

It was here Field played trombone along with his friend, trumpeter and future Grammy Award Winner Chris Botti.

During this same time he also worked as a non-union projectionist at a second-run movie theater.

Field graduated with his class from Centennial High School on Portland's east side and briefly attended Southern Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University) in Ashland on a music scholarship, but left after his freshman year favoring a move to New York to study acting with Robert X. Modica at his renowned Carnegie Hall Studio.

Soon after, Field began performing with the Ark Theatre Company as both an actor and musician.

He received his Master of Fine Arts from the AFI Conservatory.

Field has worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, screenwriter, and editor.

Field began making motion pictures after Woody Allen cast him in Radio Days (1987).

He went on to work with some of America's greatest filmmakers, including Stanley Kubrick, Victor Nuñez, and Carl Franklin.

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times summarized Field's acting career in his review of Broken Vessels:

"'Field has a deceptive facade of all-American clean-cut looks that allows him to suggest a wide range of emotions and thoughts behind such a regular-guy appearance; in Ruby in Paradise he expressed such uncommon decency and intelligence you had to wonder how Ashley Judd's hardscrabble Ruby could ever have considered letting him get away. In Eyes Wide Shut he's the likable med school dropout turned saloon piano player, and here he's an increasingly raging sociopath. In all these roles Field has the precious gift of being able to surprise you and to command your attention on screen.'"

Franklin and Nuñez, both AFI alumni, encouraged Field to enroll as a Directing Fellow at the AFI, which he did in 1992.

He received the Satyajit Ray Award from the British Film Institute, and a Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival, and his short films were exhibited at various venues overseas and domestically at the Museum of Modern Art.

Before establishing himself as a filmmaker, Field appeared as an actor in such films as Victor Nuñez's Ruby in Paradise (1993), Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking (1996), and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

He also co-created the concept for bubble gum brand Big League Chew.

Field was born in Pomona, California, where his family ran a poultry farm.

When Field turned two, his family moved to Portland, Oregon, where his father went to work as a salesman, and his mother became a school librarian.

At an early age, he became interested in performing sleight-of-hand and later music.

As a child in Portland, Field was a batboy for the Portland Mavericks, a single A independent minor league baseball team owned by Hollywood actor Bing Russell.

Kurt Russell, Bing's son and later an actor in his own right, also played for the Portland Mavericks during this time.

Field and Mavericks pitching coach Rob Nelson created the first batch of Big League Chew in the Field family kitchen.

He is known for directing In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022), which were nominated for a combined fourteen Academy Awards.

Field has personally received six Academy Award nominations for his films; two for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, one for Best Director, and one for Best Original Screenplay.

Field began his filmmaking career in 2001 when he wrote and directed In the Bedroom'', a film based on Andre Dubus's short story "Killings".

(Kubrick and Dubus were among Field's mentors; both died right before the production of In the Bedroom.) In the Bedroom was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Wilkinson, his first nomination), Best Actress (Sissy Spacek, her sixth), Supporting Actress (Marisa Tomei, her second), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The film was shot in Rockland, Maine, a New England town where Field resides.

The house where he, his wife (Serena Rathbun), and their four children live was even used as the setting for one sequence.

Rathbun and Spacek did some of the set design and Field handled the camera himself on many of the shots.

In the Bedroom made its debut at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

Dennis Lim wrote in the Village Voice:

"Todd Field's debut feature, In the Bedroom, alighted on the snowy peaks of Sundance last January as if from another universe. Here was a small miracle of patience and composure, so starkly removed from everything the festival had come to represent that it seemed almost to herald the overdue coming-of-age of American independent film."

Upon the film's release David Ansen of Newsweek wrote:

"Todd Field exhibits a mastery of his craft many filmmakers never acquire in a lifetime. With one film he's guaranteed his future as a director. He has the magnificent obsession of the natural-born filmmaker"

Anthony Quinn of The Independent stated,

"'Field has pulled off something here I thought no American filmmaker would ever manage again: he makes violence feel genuinely shocking.'"

For his work on In the Bedroom, Field was named Director of the Year by the National Board of Review, and his script was awarded Best Original Screenplay.