Todd Field Trivia | 65 facts about the director

Todd Field is an American actor and filmmaker. He has three feature films under his belt and he is nominated for the Oscar for directing.

His most recent film “Tar” earned rave reviews and six Oscar nominations. So let’s find out some trivia and facts about his life and career thus far.

His full name William Todd Field
He born was born February 24, 1964
He is an American actor and filmmaker
He is known for directing In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022)
His films are 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 was born in Pomona, California
There his family ran a poultry farm
When Field turned two, his family moved to Portland, Oregon
There 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
In 1980, Nelson and former New York Yankees all-star Jim Bouton sold the idea to the Wrigley Company
Since that time over 800 million pouches have been sold worldwide
Field has worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, and screenwriter
He 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
Franklin and Nuñez, both AFI alumni, encouraged Field to enroll as a Directing Fellow at the AFI
He enrolled in 1992
He has received the Satyajit Ray Award from the British Film Institute, and a Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival
His short films have been exhibited at various venues overseas and domestically at the Museum of Modern Art
Field wrote and directed In the Bedroom, a film based on Andre Dubus’s short story “Killings”
Kubrick and Dubus were among Field’s mentors and 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 Screenpla
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
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
The film was named Best Picture of the Year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle awarded Field Best First Film
In the Bedroom received six American Film Institute Awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, three Golden Globe nominations, and five Academy Award nominations
The American Film Institute honored Field with the Franklin Schaffner Alumni Medal
The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists In the Bedroom alongside Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Dr. Strangelove, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Conversation, Nashville, Taxi Driver, The Elephant Man, Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, and Roma as “The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars”
Field followed In the Bedroom with Little Children
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including two for the actors: Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley
After having written, directed and produced just two feature films, Field had garnered five Academy Award nominations for his actors and three for himself
The film, based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name, premiered at the 2006 New York Film Festival
Many members of Field’s creative team on In the Bedroom returned to work with him on the film, including Serena Rathbun
After Little Children, Field went fifteen years without directing anything, which various film journalists lamented
During that time, Field was attached to a number of film projects
Including a film adaptation of the 2009 Boston Teran novel The Creed of Violence, set during the Mexican Revolution, which at different times was set to star Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale and Daniel Craig
A coming-of-age Minor League Baseball story set in the 1970s Northwest
An adaptation of the 1985 Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian
A political thriller called As It Happens, co-written by Joan Didion
An adaptation of Jess Walter’s novel Beautiful Ruins
And a film about U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl
In 2016, Field worked on a planned television adaptation of the 2015 Jonathan Franzen novel Purity, which was to be a 20-hour limited series for Showtime
The series was to be co-written by Field, Franzen and playwright David Hare
It would have starred Daniel Craig as Andreas Wolf and been executive produced by Field, Franzen, Craig, Hare and Scott Rudin
In 2016 Franzen said on The Diane Rehm Show that he was learning the art of adaptation from Field, whom he considered a “master” of the form
But in a February 2018 interview with The Times, Hare said that, given the budget for the adaptation ($170 million), he doubted it would ever be made
Field’s third film, Tár, starring Cate Blanchett as the fictional conductor/composer Lydia Tár, premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival
There it competed for the Golden Lion and Queer Lion, with Blanchett winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actress
The film had a limited theatrical release in the United States on October 7, 2022, before its wide release on October 28, 2022
It also had an International theatrical release that began first in the UK on 13 January 2023
For his work on Tár, Field was nominated by the Directors’ Guild of America for Best Director, the Producers Guild of America for Best Film, and the Writers Guild of America for Best Original Screenplay
Tár was named Best Picture of the year by the London Film Critics’ Circle with Field being named Best Director of the Year and Blanchett Best Actress
Field was named Best Director by The Los Angeles Film Critics Association
His script Best Original Screenplay of the Year, as did the National Society of Film Critics
Tár was selected Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, London Film Critics’ Circle, and the National Society of Film Critics
Becoming only the fourth film in history named as such from the world’s top critics’ groups
The previous films being Schindler’s List, L. A. Confidential, and The Social Network
Tár was named “Best Picture of the Year” by Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Screen Daily, Entertainment Weekly, and IndieWire’s annual poll of 165 critics worldwide
The American Film Institute named it one of the top 10 films of the year