[1] Before establishing himself as a film-maker, 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).

[6][7][8][9] A budding jazz musician, at the age of sixteen Field became a member of the Lab Band at Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon.

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.

[11] Field first appeared in motion pictures after Woody Allen cast him in Radio Days (1987), and went on to work with filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Victor Nuñez, and Carl Franklin.

[12] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times summarized Field's acting career in his review of Broken Vessels (1999): "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.

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

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.

"[18][19]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.

The March 2023 issue of New York magazine listed 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, Roma, and Tár, also directed by Field, as "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".

[21] After years spent doing research for a biopic of 19th-century stage actor Edwin Booth titled Time Between Trains, Field resurfaced with Little Children in 2006.

"[25]International Cinephile Society's Matt Mazur called the film "subversive" and designed to disorient the viewer with "seemingly non-connected imagery to suggest a tone and a mood of disquiet."

"[27] Later that year, 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.

[29] In his 2015 Ioncinema piece "Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action", Nicholas Bell wrote, "It is definitely time for Field to throw one down the middle.

"[30] However, during this period Field did write a number of film and television projects that never came to fruition, including adaptations of the novels Blood Meridian,[31][32] Beautiful Ruins[33] and Purity.

[37] It had also been reported that Field might direct a coming-of-age script set in the 1970s Northwest based on his experiences with the Minor League Baseball team the Portland Mavericks, that Kurt Russell was involved in.

"[58][59][60] Owen Gleiberman in his Venice Film Festival Daily Variety review wrote:"Let me say right up front: It's the work of a master filmmaker... Tár is not a judgement so much as a statement you can make your own judgment about.

"[64]Robbie Collin, of the Daily Telegraph, wrote: "Field himself was a protégé of Stanley Kubrick, and Tár feels Kubrickian in many respects: its formal mastery, its exceptional acting, its atmosphere that clings like mist.

[68] Field has cited George Roy Hill, Alan J. Pakula, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg as the directors who inspired him when he was a young person.