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 club owned by Hollywood actor Bing Russell. Kurt Russell, Bing’s son and later an acclaimed Hollywood actor in his own right, also played for the Portland Mavericks during this time. Field and Maverick 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.

Many members of Field’s creative team on In the Bedroom returned to work with him on the film, including Serena Rathbun. In a 2006 interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson, Field said Rathbun was the reason he quit acting and began making his own films after she told him to “Do what you want to do. Don’t get distracted.” Later that year on the Charlie Rose show, Field spoke extensively about the importance of Rathbun as his creative partner, describing a conversation he had with her where she gave him the most pivotal scene, “for me, the film is unthinkable without it.”

From 2008 to 2016 it was purported that Field was involved with a film set in the Mexican Revolution starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a coming of age minor league baseball story set in the 1970s Northwest, and novel adaptations with Field co-writing alongside such literary luminaries as Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didion, and Jonathan Franzen who in 2016 stated on the Diane Rehm show that he was “learning” about the art of adaptation from Field who he considered to be a “master” of the form.

To date, no further information has come to light regarding any of the above projects, prompting speculation as far back as 2010 that the filmmaker had become somewhat of a recluse. That year the Playlist’s Kevin Jagernauth wrote, “It’s four long years since Todd Field’s extraordinary and excellent Little Children, and we’ve heard very little from the director since.” And Nicholas Bell in his 2015 Ioncinema piece, “Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action,” states “It is definitely time for Field to throw one down the middle. In the meantime, we’ll just have to watch In the Bedroom for the umpteenth time.”

In 2016, Daily Variety reported that Franzen’s novel Purity was in the process of being adapted into a 20-hour limited series for Showtime by Field who would share writing duties with Franzen and the playwright Sir David Hare. It would star Daniel Craig as Andreas Wolf and be executive produced by Field, Franzen, Craig, Hare & Scott Rudin.

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’.”