Steven Craig is best known as Sally Field’s first husband, but the public record reveals a more complicated figure than the generic “celebrity ex-husband” label suggests. He was Field’s high school sweetheart, married her in 1968, fathered her two eldest sons, and later helped shape a family life divided between Hollywood privilege and countercultural communities. Yet Craig never built a documented public career comparable to Field’s, and much of what online biographies claim about his occupation, wealth, and later relationships cannot be reliably verified. His real significance lies elsewhere: in Field’s formative years, in the unconventional childhood of their sons, and in a consequential intervention that helped Peter Craig become an accomplished writer.
Quick Bio
| Field | Verified Information |
|---|
| Full Name | Steven Craig |
| Known For | Sally Field’s first husband |
| Public Profile | Private individual |
| Relationship With Sally Field | High school sweetheart and former husband |
| Marriage Year | 1968 |
| Divorce Year | 1975 |
| Children | Peter Craig and Eli Craig |
| Reported Profession | Described as a writer in a contemporary 1968 report |
| Famous Son | Peter Craig, novelist and screenwriter |
| Other Son | Eli Craig, writer and film director |
| Net Worth | Verified financial information has not been publicly disclosed |
| Current Status | Later personal and professional details remain private |
Who Is Steven Craig?
Steven Craig entered public view because of his relationship with Sally Field, not through a sustained career in entertainment or public life. Oprah Winfrey’s published profile of Field describes Craig as her high school sweetheart and records that Field divorced him at 29 after seven years of marriage. A contemporary United Press International report published after their wedding identified him as a 23-year-old writer, Steven Craig.
That contemporary description matters because numerous modern biography pages assign Craig a range of professions—businessman, producer, real-estate executive, or entrepreneur—without providing credible documentation. The surviving mainstream record supports describing him as a writer at the time of the marriage. It does not establish a notable publishing, film, or corporate career under his name.
Dependable public sources have not comprehensively documented his birth date, education, professional history, and present circumstances. Verified financial data has not been publicly disclosed, and estimated net-worth figures attached to him online should not be treated as factual.
Craig’s privacy is therefore not an incidental gap in his biography. It is one of its defining features.
A Relationship That Predated Sally Field’s Fame
Craig and Field knew each other before she became one of the most recognised American actresses of her generation. Their connection originated during their school years, giving the relationship a history that predated Gidget, The Flying Nun, two Academy Awards, and the long struggle Field later described as being taken seriously as a dramatic performer.
They married in 1968, while Field was starring in The Flying Nun. The UPI report published after their honeymoon described her through the television role that then defined her public image and referred to Craig simply as a writer. Field was 21; Craig was reported to be 23.
The timing placed their marriage inside a particularly unsettled period in Field’s professional development. She had achieved early television fame but did not yet possess the artistic authority or freedom associated with her later work in Sybil, Norma Rae, and Places in the Heart. Marriage and motherhood unfolded while she was still trying to move beyond an image created for her by network television.
It would be simplistic, however, to claim that Craig either caused or solved the pressures surrounding her. Field’s career frustrations, family history, and emotional life were considerably broader than one relationship. The verifiable conclusion is narrower: the marriage coincided with her earliest fame and the birth of the two children who would become central to her adult identity.
Marriage, Children, and Divorce
Steven Craig and Sally Field were married from 1968 until 1975. Their first son, Peter Craig, was born on November 10, 1969. Their second, Eli Craig, followed on May 25, 1972.
A concise timeline is useful:
- 1968: Craig and Field marry.
- 1969: Peter Craig is born.
- 1972: Eli Craig is born.
- 1975: The marriage ends in divorce.
Field has since described becoming a mother at 23 as psychologically decisive. Speaking to Julia Louis-Dreyfus in 2024, she said her attachment to Peter awakened a fierceness she had not previously recognised. Caring for him became connected, in her mind, with learning to care for herself.
That reflection should not be misread as a judgment solely about Craig. It belongs to Field’s broader account of youth, motherhood, and self-preservation. Still, it helps explain why any serious discussion of her first marriage must treat the children as more than a biographical footnote. Motherhood became one of the organising forces of her life.
What Sally Field Has Actually Said About the Marriage
Celebrity retrospectives often soften failed relationships into stories of enduring affection. In Craig’s case, some articles claim that he and Field preserved an exceptionally close bond or that she later called him her “first real love.”
The available reputable record does not clearly substantiate either formulation.
Field has publicly identified Craig as her high school sweetheart. She has also spoken candidly about her difficulty choosing compatible partners. During her 2024 appearance on Wiser Than Me, she reflected on both of her marriages and said:
“I was never really good at picking a partner for myself.”
She described the men she married as poor matches and said she had struggled to find a partner who could know her, love her, and challenge her without trying to change her. That is a more complicated retrospective than the sentimental version frequently reproduced online.
There is evidence that Craig remained an active father after the divorce. There is not enough reliable evidence to characterise the former spouses’ private relationship as either unusually warm or persistently hostile. Their sons spent meaningful periods with each parent, but shared parenting does not automatically prove emotional closeness between two divorced adults.
The most responsible conclusion is that they remained connected through Peter and Eli while keeping the nature of their post-marital relationship largely private.
A Childhood Between Hollywood and the Counterculture
The richest independent account of Steven Craig after the divorce comes not from celebrity reporting but from a 2005 Los Angeles Times profile of Peter Craig.
Peter described an upbringing divided between strikingly different environments. His mother lived in Brentwood and worked on film and television productions. His father lived for periods in communal settings in Southern California and Oregon. The newspaper characterised Steven during that era as a “hippie-biker father” and reported that his sons moved between their mother’s professional Hollywood world and their father’s anti-materialistic communities.
Peter remembered being a young child running barefoot through a commune before a limousine arrived to collect him and his brother for time with their mother. He described the economic and cultural contrast inside his family as extreme.
This account complicates the polished celebrity-family narrative. Steven Craig was not merely absent from Field’s red-carpet life; he represented a markedly different way of living. His sons’ childhood was shaped by movement between those two worlds.
That instability had costs. Peter told the newspaper that both parents, reflecting a permissive mood of the period, sometimes allowed too much freedom. He left high school at 16 after a turbulent adolescence.
Yet Peter’s account of his father is not simply accusatory.
Steven Craig’s Intervention in Peter’s Life
As Peter’s behaviour became more difficult, Steven imposed structure. According to the Los Angeles Times, he took his son away from the comparatively comfortable Westside environment and required him to work a physically demanding construction job in Oregon. Craig woke him each morning, made coffee, and ensured that he reported for work.
“He was the only one who could help me, and he did help me.”
The newspaper connected that period of discipline with Peter’s eventual progression to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a James Michener-Copernicus Fellowship.
No responsible biography should claim that a single parental decision created Peter’s career. His talent, education, and persistence were his own. But the episode offers rare evidence of Steven Craig acting not as a peripheral celebrity spouse but as a father capable of recognising danger and changing his approach.
It also provides a revealing counterpoint to Field’s reflections on motherhood. Both parents, in different ways and at different moments, appear to have regarded their children as responsibilities that demanded action rather than image management.
Peter Craig: From Novelist to Oscar-Nominated Screenwriter
Peter Craig first established himself as a novelist before becoming a major Hollywood screenwriter. His credits include The Town, The Batman, and Top Gun: Maverick. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated him and Justin Marks for the story of Top Gun: Maverick in the adapted screenplay category at the 95th Academy Awards.
The connection between Peter’s upbringing and his writing should not be reduced to armchair psychology. Still, family rupture, estrangement, flawed fathers, and redemption recur in his work. The Los Angeles Times observed that his novel Blood Father drew upon emotional terrain familiar from his own youth: a troubled child, a separated family, and a father attempting to intervene before it is too late.
Steven Craig’s influence is therefore visible less through public achievements of his own than through the experiences his son later transformed into fiction.
Eli Craig’s Career Behind the Camera
Steven and Field’s younger son, Eli Craig, also entered filmmaking, primarily as a writer and director. He is best known for the horror comedy Tucker & Dale vs. Evil and later directed Little Evil and Clown in a Cornfield.
Eli’s sensibility differs from Peter’s darker crime writing, but both sons built careers around storytelling rather than pursuing conventional celebrity. Their work is largely behind the camera, even though their mother became famous in front of it.
That shared direction does not prove a specific inherited influence from Steven, who was described as a writer in 1968. It is nevertheless a notable family pattern: Craig and Field’s two sons both became professional writers and filmmakers.
Did Steven Craig Remarry?
Reliable mainstream sources do not provide a definitive public account of Steven Craig’s later romantic life. Claims about additional marriages, partners, or children are frequently repeated without clear sourcing.
His current residence and personal status also remain private. Absence from celebrity coverage should not be filled with speculation. It simply means that Craig appears to have chosen—or at least maintained—a life beyond sustained public scrutiny.
Steven Craig’s Net Worth and Career Claims
No authoritative financial disclosure or well-sourced business profile establishes Steven Craig’s net worth. Figures published by celebrity-finance sites are unsupported estimates and should not be presented as verified information.
The same caution applies to occupational claims. The strongest contemporary evidence describes him as a writer when he married Field. There is insufficient dependable documentation to build a detailed career chronology beyond that description.
This is an important distinction in biography writing. Repetition across multiple low-quality websites does not transform an unsupported statement into a fact.
His Place in Sally Field’s Story
Steven Craig matters because he belonged to the period when Sally Field’s private and professional identities were still being formed. He knew her before her most celebrated performances, shared the years of her early television fame, and became the father of two sons whose lives would extend the family’s connection to American filmmaking.
He should not be romanticised as a lost great love without evidence. Nor should he be flattened into the role of an irrelevant former husband.
The public record suggests something more human: a young marriage that did not last, an unconventional father whose lifestyle contributed to instability, and a parent who later supplied structure when his son urgently needed it. Field’s later reflections show that the relationship was not the ideal partnership she had sought. Peter’s account shows that Craig could still be consequential and caring.
Steven Craig’s biography remains incomplete because much of his life was never lived for public consumption. The responsible portrait is therefore built not by disguising those gaps, but by recognising them—and by focusing on the moments when reliable evidence allows him to emerge as more than a name beside Sally Field’s.#
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(FAQs)
Who is Steven Craig?
Steven Craig is best known as the first husband of actress Sally Field. The couple were high school sweethearts and married in 1968. He has largely remained outside public life.
How long were Steven Craig and Sally Field married?
Steven Craig and Sally Field were married from 1968 to 1975. Their marriage lasted approximately seven years.
How many children do Steven Craig and Sally Field have?
They have two sons: Peter Craig, a novelist and screenwriter, and Eli Craig, a writer and film director.
What does Steven Craig do for a living?
A contemporary report published around the time of his marriage described Steven Craig as a writer. Reliable public sources do not provide a complete or verified account of his later professional career.
Why did Steven Craig and Sally Field divorce?
Neither Steven Craig nor Sally Field has publicly provided a detailed, definitive explanation for their divorce. Field has spoken more broadly about feeling that her marriages were not well matched, but the private circumstances remain largely undisclosed.
Did Steven Craig remain involved in his sons’ lives?
Public accounts from Peter Craig indicate that Steven remained involved in his life after the divorce. Peter has described a period when his father imposed structure and helped him move away from a difficult phase during his teenage years.
Did Steven Craig remarry after Sally Field?
There is no sufficiently reliable public record confirming whether Steven Craig remarried. Claims about his later relationships should be treated cautiously unless supported by reputable sources.
What is Steven Craig’s net worth?
Steven Craig’s verified net worth has not been publicly disclosed. Figures circulating on celebrity biography and finance websites are generally estimates without authoritative documentation.
Is Steven Craig connected to the entertainment industry?
Steven Craig is connected to the entertainment industry primarily through Sally Field and their sons. Peter Craig became an acclaimed screenwriter, while Eli Craig developed a career as a writer and director.
Where is Steven Craig now?
Steven Craig’s current residence, occupation, and personal circumstances have not been reliably documented in mainstream public sources. He appears to have maintained a private life away from regular media attention.
