Todd Field

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Todd Field (2007)

Todd Field (born February 24, 1964 in Pomona , California ; actually William Todd Field ) is an American actor , film director , screenwriter , film producer and film composer .

biography

Acting career

Todd Field was born in 1964 as William Todd Field in Pomona, Los Angeles County , and grew up with two older half-siblings and his biological sister Kelli , who was two years younger in Portland , Oregon . After graduating from high school , Field began to warm up to acting. He decided not to attend college in favor of an acting training and went to New York , where the jazz enthusiast performed with the Ark Theater Company and also hired himself out as a musician. A first role in American television arrived Field 1986 in ABC - sitcom Head of the Class (1986-1991). A year later, he got a recurring role in Barnet Kellman's television series Take Five, starring George Segal , which was discontinued by CBS television after only two episodes broadcast . Also in 1987, Field made his US cinema debut with a supporting role as a singer in Woody Allen's award-winning tragic comedy Radio Days , which casts a nostalgic look at the golden era of radio and was featured in the television film The Heartbreakers of the Last Bank committed. In the comedy by Mollie Miller, he plays an ambitious and unpopular high school student at the side of Viveka Davis , who takes on the identity of a foreign exchange student in order to move into the focus of his classmates. After supporting roles in several B-movies and larger productions such as Roland Joffé's drama Die Schattenmacher (1989) and Steve Rash's comedy Born in Queens (1991) in which he a. a. worked with Paul Newman , John Cusack , Laura Dern , Kevin Bacon and John Malkovich , followed his breakthrough as an actor in 1993 with the male lead in Victor Nuñez ' Ruby in Paradise . In the drama, Field mimes as the meek and well-read artificial gardener Mike, the object of desire of the heroine Ashley Judd . In 1994 he was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor. To build on this success did not succeed, although in the following years as roles in Hollywood - blockbusters ( Twister , 1996, The Haunting , 1999), as in Art Cinema ( Eyes Wide Shut , 1999) or in the US TV ( Chicago Hope , 1995; again with feeling , 2000) clothed. One of his outstanding acting achievements is the role of Jimmy in Scott Ziehl's independent film Broken Vessels (1998). In the drama, which is set in Los Angeles , he plays a cynical, corrupt and drug addict ambulance driver on the side of Jason London .

Success as a film director

In addition to his work as an actor, Todd Field was encouraged by the two directors Carl Franklin and Victor Nunez to train as a film director at the American Film Institute (AFI) in the fall of 1992 . In the same year Field made his directorial debut with the short film Too Romantic , which he produced with his production company Mercury Films , which he founded together with Matthew Modine . A year later, three more short films in black and white followed , including the drama Delivering , an adaptation of the short story of the same name by Andre Dubus and When I Was A Boy, staged together with Matthew Modine . This 17-minute short film was accepted into the New Directors / New Films series by Lincoln Center and shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After graduating from the AFI in Los Angeles in 1994, he was able to build on his previous success a year later with the short film Nonnie & Alex . The drama about a boy who, with the help of a friend, tries to come to terms with his mother's cancer death, brought Field 1995 a. a. the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Prize from the American Film Institute. In 1999 he directed the television series Again with Emotion , before directing his first feature film two years later. For In the Bedroom (2001) was again a short story by Andre Dubus Pate that the filmmakers together with screenwriter Robert Festinger adapted for the big screen. The focus is on a middle-class married couple from a small town in the US state of Maine who are confronted with the violent death of their only son. The independent film, which was shot in just a few weeks and cost around 1.7 million US dollars, starring such renowned actors as Sissy Spacek , Tom Wilkinson and Marisa Tomei , became a surprise success with critics and audiences in the USA. The New York Times praised Field for his extraordinarily detailed and deeply moving work. In Germany , Der Spiegel wrote that the directorial work was full of magical moments that you couldn't get out of your head even days later. In the Bedroom has received 27 festival and critic awards, including the National Board of Review awards for Directing and Screenwriting and the New York Film Critics Award for Best First Work. In 2002 (official census 2001) the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including in the category of best film , but received no awards.

Following the success of In the Bedroom , Todd Field directed the 2005 episode Cheyenne, WY of the fantasy series Carnivàle before directing his second feature film in 2006. Little Children , the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta , is a chronicle of the breakup of the American middle class . As in his first cinema work, the family dynamics are disturbed by external influences. A married family man (played by Patrick Wilson ) falls in love with a single mother ( Kate Winslet ) who is as unhappily married and professionally unsuccessful as he is. With the forbidden love affair comes the arrival of a pedophile in Boston suburbs with playgrounds and swimming pools. The drama, starring Jennifer Connelly , Noah Emmerich and Phyllis Somerville , was filmed in Maine, Massachusetts , New Jersey , New York and Rhode Island at the end of July 2005 and opened in US cinemas on October 6, 2006. With his second film directorial work, Field was able to build on the success of In the Bedroom and critics praised him as one of the most literary American filmmakers. Field is one of those who would try to discover a visual language to the ambiguous simplicity of contemporary, realistic fiction. At the 2007 Golden Globe Awards , the film received three nominations, including a. for Best Drama in Motion Pictures, while Field and Perrotta won Oscar and Writers Guild of America nominations for screenplay and were recognized by the San Francisco Film Critics Association.

Todd Field has been married to Serena Rathbun, daughter of award-winning American screenwriter Bo Goldman ( One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , 1975; Melvin and Howard , 1980), since 1986 . She assisted him with Too Romantic and Delivering as a costume designer and wrote the film script for Nonnie & Alex . They have three children together, including daughter Alida P. Field (* 1987) and Henry Rathbun Field (* 1993), who appeared in supporting roles in In the Bedroom and Little Children . In addition to working as an actor, film director and screenwriter, Field was also sporadically involved in his own projects as a film composer or camera operator. As a film producer he was a. a. in Craig Sheffer's tragic comedy American Crude (2005) or Mia Goldman's drama Open Window (2006).

Filmography

Actor (selection)

Director

  • 1992: Too Romantic (short film)
  • 1993: Delivering (short film)
  • 1993: When I Was a Boy (short film)
  • 1993: The Dog (short film)
  • 1995: Nonnie & Alex (short film)
  • 1999: Again with Feeling (Once & Again, TV series)
  • 2001: In the Bedroom
  • 2005: Carnivàle (TV Series, Episode: Cheyenne, WY )
  • 2006: Little Children

Screenwriter

producer

Film composer

  • 1989: Ausweglos ( Nowhere to Run )
  • 1989: Love, Stress and Fever Curves ( Gross Anatomy )
  • 1993: Ruby in Paradise
  • 1993: The Dog (short film)
  • 1998: Broken Vessels

Awards

Oscar

  • 2002 : nominated in the categories of Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay for In the Bedroom
  • 2007 : Nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Little Children with Tom Perrotta .

Golden Globe Award

  • 2007 : nominated in the category Best Screenplay for Little Children with Tom Perrotta

Further

AFI Awards

  • 2002: Nominated in the categories of Best Film , Best Director and Best Screenplay for In the Bedroom

AFI festival

  • 2001: nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for In the Bedroom

American Film Institute

  • 1995: Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Prize for Nonnie & Alex
  • 2002: Franklin J. Schaffner Prize

Aspen shortsfest

  • 1995: Best short film for Nonnie & Alex

Bodil

  • 2003: Nominated in the Best American Film category for In the Bedroom

Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards

  • 2007: Nominated for Best Screenplay for Little Children

Chicago Film Critics Association Awards

  • 2002: Best young director for In the Bedroom
  • 2006: Nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Little Children

Deauville Film Festival

  • 2002: nominated for the Grand Special Prize for In the Bedroom

Gotham Awards

  • 2006: Nominated in the Best Picture category for Little Children

Independent Spirit Awards

  • 1994: Nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Ruby in Paradise
  • 2002: Best first work , nominated in the Best Screenplay category for In the Bedroom

London Film Festival

  • 2001: Satyajit Ray Prize and Sutherland Trophy - Honorable Mention for In the Bedroom

Montréal World Film Festival

  • 2001: FIPRESCI Prize - Special award , nominated for the Grand Prix des Amériques for In the Bedroom

National Board of Review

  • 2001: Best Director and Best Screenplay for In the Bedroom

New York Film Critics Circle Awards

  • 2001: Best first work for In the Bedroom

Online Film Critics Society Awards

  • 2002: Nominated in the categories Best Director , Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Young Filmmaker for In the Bedroom
  • 2007: Nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Little Children

Palm Springs International Film Festival

  • 2007: Visionary Award for Little Children

Paris Film Festival

  • 2000: nominated for the Grand Prize for In the Bedroom

San Francisco Film Critics Circle

  • 2006: Best Adapted Screenplay for Little Children

Satellite Awards

  • 2002: Best Adapted Screenplay for In the Bedroom
  • 2006: Nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Little Children

Sundance Film Festival

  • 1995: Special jury award for Nonnie & Alex
  • 2002: nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for In the Bedroom

USC Scripter Award

  • 2002: nominated in the category Best Adapted Screenplay for In the Bedroom

Writers Guild of America

  • 2007: Nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for Little Children

literature

  • Festlinger, Robert; Field, Todd; Dubus, Andre: In the bedroom: a screenplay . New York: Talk Miramax Books, 2002. ISBN 1-4013-5924-8 (English edition)

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ cf. Movie review from Stephen Holden in The New York Times of 23 November 2001
  2. ↑ cf. Kultur Spiegel 05/2002
  3. ↑ cf. AO Scott film review in the New York Times on September 29, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Field, Todd
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Field, William Todd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor, film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Pomona , California , USA