- Sally Field is an Academy, Golden Globe, and Emmy Award winning actress.
- She has three sons across two marriages.
- The ‘Forrest Gump’ actress is currently appearing in the ensemble cast of ’80 For Brady.’
Sally Field, 76, is one of the most celebrated actresses in the entertainment industry. With Academy Awards for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart, Emmy Awards for Sybil and Brothers & Sisters, and a prestigious Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, she’s far surpassed the status quo.
Behind the scenes, she’s had an equally fulfilling personal life, raising three sons across two marriages — two of whom currently work in the entertainment industry. When asked by Oprah Winfrey in 2008 if her Brothers & Sisters character Nora Walker had been influenced by own experience as a mom, she said it absolutely had. “In every way!” she exclaimed.
“God stepped in and handed me this role to work out so many things in my own life. Like turning 60: What does that mean, especially when you don’t have a mate? And what does it mean to be the mother of three grown-ups? It’s hard for me to tell where Nora ends and where Sally begins. Except Nora doesn’t have a career, and she’s a little overbearing in a way that I’m not—or at least, I think I’m not. My sons might have a different take on that.”
Here’s what to know about Sally Field’s three talented children.
Peter Craig
After Sally married Steven Craig, her high school sweetheart, in 1968, she had her first child — Peter Craig, 53, who is a screenwriter and novelist who worked on landmark box office hits like Top Gun: Maverick, The Batman, The Mother, Bad Boys For Life, and the first two Hunger Games films. His novels include The Martini Shot and Blood Father. He’s been nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards and one Critics Choice Movie Award.
“My oldest son is this miraculously loving parent to his two little girls. When I watch him with them, I think, ‘Boy, I would have liked to have had comfort like that,’” she told Oprah — though it’s worth noting that since the 2008 interview, he’s had one more child for a total of three. “They won’t have any trouble knowing how to love or be loved,” she continued. “To raise children who go on to be great parents is an accomplishment—that’s the Oscar moment in life.”
Like his mother, Peter has been married twice — once to journalist Amy Scattergood, with whom he welcomed his two daughters, and then to actress Jennifer DeFrancisco, who he divorced in 2017. They share one son together.
Eli Craig
Like his mother, Eli Craig is an actor and director, and he’s known for films like Zombieland, Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil, and Little Evil. Born in 1972, the second of Sally’s sons with her first husband, he’s also been credited with screenwriting. “Eli would say that I’ve been a good and loving mom, but that I haven’t done a lot of things well,” Sally told Oprah in 2008. “It’s true; when he was grown, he told me that I didn’t discipline him enough. Can you believe it? I said, ‘I’d like you to try to discipline the kind of boy you were. You were absolutely uncontainable!’”
Sally continued saying that watching him parent has told him something about herself. “I now see him parenting his own son, and watching your kids become parents tells you what kind of parent you might have been. You know that at least something you gave them gives them the ability to care for their own children.”
He now has two children with his wife, actress Sasha Williams.
Sam Greisman
Sam Greisman is Sally’s one and only child with her second (and last) husband, Alan Greisman. The former couple welcomed Sam Greisman into the family in 1987. Sally once related that with her youngest, whom she gave birth to after turning 40, she learned to master some of her anxiety about going to work while being a mother. “I got a little better at being able to handle my panic at wanting to focus on work, yet knowing he needed me,” she told Good Housekeeping in 2009. “I learned to recognize that panic was just the way it was. It didn’t kill you.”
Sam, also a writer and director, came out as gay years ago, and his mom had his back. “It’s important to have a parent speak about raising a magnificent, proud, intelligent, funny, lovable, sexy gay son,” she said in another interview with Oprah in 2012. “There are so many parents who are frightened of that and who don’t embrace their children as they struggle to … embrace who they are, what nature intended them to be.”
Sam took to the podium during the Ally for Equality Award at the Human Rights Campaign Gala that same year to pay tribute to his famous mom. “When I came out, she didn’t bat an eye,” he said. “In fact, she was overjoyed. Being gay was just one more thing she loved about me. She couldn’t be more supportive of me; if anything, I wish she was a little less supportive of me.”
He’s also been known to take to Instagram with affectionate words for Sally. “Happy Mothers Day, mom,” he wrote alongside a throwback collection of red-carpet pics with Sally in 2018. “From your go-to date. Xoxo.” In 2019, the mother son duo teamed up to share a video in support of the Equality Act. “Proud to stand with @humanrightscampaign and some lady who won’t stop facetiming me to support #equalityact,” he quipped in the caption.
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