Todd Field then and now #tar #helenhunt #billpaxton

William Todd Field (born February 24, 1964) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for directing In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022), films 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.

Education
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.

Career
Field has worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, and screenwriter, and 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, which he did 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.

Tár
Field's third film, Tár, starring Cate Blanchett as the fictional conductor/composer Lydia Tár, premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, where 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, and International theatrical release that began first in the UK on 13 January 2033.

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 Writer's Guild of America for Best Original Screenplay.

Tár received five nominations from 76th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Sound, and Best Screenplay of the Year, and six nominations for the 95th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Field, and Best Actress for Blanchett.

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, and 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, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics, becoming only the seventh film in history named as such from the nation's top critics' groups, the so-called "trifecta." The previous films being Goodfellas, Schindler's List, L.A. Confidential, The Hurt Locker, The Social Network, and Drive My Car.