Steven Craig: The Man Sally Field Loved First — and Why His Story Matters on Its Own

Table of Contents

Quick Bio

Detail	Info
Full Name	Steven Craig
Born	Circa mid-1940s, United States (exact birth date not publicly confirmed)
Nationality	American
What He Does / Did	Actor; reportedly worked as a construction contractor; communal living advocate
Biggest Accomplishments	Married to Sally Field from 1968 to 1975; father of two sons — Peter Craig (Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Top Gun: Maverick, The Batman) and Eli Craig (writer-director, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil); part of the early California counterculture commune movement post-divorce
Other Key Facts	High school sweethearts with Sally Field in Pasadena, California; retreated entirely from public life after their divorce; his sons grew up between Hollywood film sets and their father’s commune, an unusual “class dynamic” Peter Craig has described as formative

An honest note upfront: Steven Craig is a private individual. The available public record on him is thin and deliberately so — he chose obscurity. This biography is built from verified facts, sets aside the noise of AI-generated content mills that confuse him with other “Steve Craig” figures, and tells the real story as clearly as the evidence allows.

Why This Quiet Man Still Gets Searched

There’s a particular type of internet curiosity reserved for the people who stood next to greatness and then quietly walked away. Steven Craig belongs to that category. He married Sally Field when they were both young and the world hadn’t fully figured out what Sally was going to become. He was there at the very beginning — before Norma Rae, before the two Academy Awards, before the iconic speech that people still quote. He was the first person she chose.

And then they split. He went to a commune. She went to Burt Reynolds and Oscar glory. And Steven Craig became one of Hollywood history’s most compelling footnotes: the man who was there first and then disappeared so completely that basic facts about his life — his birth date, his subsequent career — became genuinely difficult to verify.

People search for him partly because of Sally, yes. But also because of his sons. Peter Craig wrote the screenplay for Top Gun: Maverick and received an Academy Award nomination for The Batman. Eli Craig directed one of the cult horror-comedies most beloved by genre fans. When two sons turn out that accomplished, people naturally want to understand where they came from. And half of where they came from is a man who chose a commune over Hollywood and never looked back.

The California World That Made Him

Steven Craig grew up in Southern California, the same general orbit as Sally Field. She was born in Pasadena in 1946, and they found each other as teenagers — high school sweethearts in the way that only really happens when two young people meet at an age before the world has complicated their hearts.

Southern California in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a particular kind of place. It sat at the intersection of postwar optimism, the early entertainment industry sprawl, and the first stirrings of the counterculture that would fully erupt by the late 1960s. A kid growing up there had access to the movies, to the music industry, to the beach culture, and to a social energy that was always looking for the next new thing.

Steven came up inside all of that. He had acting ambitions — that much is clear from how he and Sally were described in those early years together. The entertainment industry was the shared context for their relationship. He wasn’t a star, but he was moving in that direction. And for a while, that direction and Sally’s pointed the same way.

High School, Hollywood Proximity, and a Young Marriage

Sally Field and Steven Craig were together through high school and married in 1968 when she was 21 and already building her career. She had done Gidget on television by this point and The Flying Nun was either running or imminent — she was already recognizable, already navigating the particular challenges of being a young woman in 1960s Hollywood while also trying to be taken seriously as an actress.

Steven was along for that ride from the inside. What his own career looked like in those years isn’t well documented. Sources variously describe him as an actor himself, and separately as someone who worked in construction contracting during the marriage — which might represent two different chapters, or the reality of an entertainment career that required supplementary work to pay the bills, which was true for most aspiring actors then as now.

What’s clear is that they built something together. They had a house. They had a life. And in November 1969, they had their first son, Peter.

Fatherhood, the Fracture, and the Commune

Peter Craig arrived in 1969. Three years later, in May 1972, Eli came. Two boys, a young couple, a marriage under the pressures of one partner’s rising fame and the complicated reality of what that does to the other person in the relationship. Sally Field has been candid over the years about how much she was figuring herself out during this period — the Actors Studio work she did, the growing sense of her own ambition, the frustration at having been cast as perky TV characters when she wanted to do serious dramatic work.

By 1974, they had separated. The divorce was finalized around 1975. Peter was five or six. Eli was two or three.

Here is where Steven Craig’s story takes its most unexpected turn. After the marriage ended, he didn’t do what many divorced fathers in Hollywood adjacent circles did — he didn’t try to build a new public profile, didn’t lean into being Sally Field’s ex-husband as a calling card, didn’t chase a career on the back of her growing celebrity. He went and joined a commune.

That word — commune — carries its 1970s California connotations, and in this case they appear to apply fairly literally. The counterculture had produced a genuine back-to-the-land, collective-living movement in California, and Steven Craig became part of it. Peter Craig has spoken about growing up shuttling between his mother’s Hollywood world — film sets, awards, the machinery of show business — and his father’s deliberately anti-Hollywood existence inside communal life. He described it as a “crazy class dynamic.” That phrase says a lot. Not just about wealth and poverty but about two completely opposite philosophies of what a life is supposed to look like.

For a child to hold both of those realities simultaneously, to spend time on film sets and then return to a commune, is a formative experience that tends to produce either confusion or a very sophisticated understanding of how differently people choose to live. Peter Craig became a novelist and then a screenwriter. Eli Craig made films about social dynamics with horror-comedy edges. You can feel the complexity of their upbringing in both of their creative sensibilities.

Who Steven Craig Was When the Cameras Weren’t There

The private version of Steven Craig — the man away from the brief intersection with celebrity culture — is genuinely difficult to access. He gave no interviews after the divorce. He didn’t turn into a well-known ex-husband who profited from the relationship. He did not resurface in industry contexts.

What the commune chapter tells us is something about his values. He moved away from materialism at a time when his ex-wife was moving toward enormous commercial success. That choice — taken in the mid-1970s, when the commune movement was already past its peak and many people were abandoning the experiment — suggests someone with either deep ideological conviction or a profound need for a different kind of community than mainstream American life offered. Possibly both.

There’s something almost admirable about the completeness of the exit. In a cultural moment that celebrates visibility above almost everything, Steven Craig built a life that could not be Googled. Whatever he was doing inside the commune, whoever he was becoming through those years, he was doing it entirely outside the frame of public scrutiny.

The Sons He Raised: The Legacy That’s Actually Verifiable

The most concrete way to understand Steven Craig’s influence is through Peter and Eli, both of whom grew up partly in his world.

Peter Craig — born 1969, named by Sally — became a serious literary novelist before pivoting into screenwriting. His screenplay for Top Gun: Maverick was one of the most commercially successful films in decades, earning him an Oscar nomination. He also co-wrote The Batman and Bad Boys for Life. He’s spoken thoughtfully in interviews about his unusual childhood, the commune, the strange split between his parents’ two worlds.

Eli Craig — born 1972 — directed Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, the 2010 horror-comedy that developed a passionate cult following. He has also directed episodes of television, most notably directing his mother Sally Field in episodes of Brothers & Sisters. That particular dynamic — a son directing his own mother — is its own interesting story, and speaks to a family that found ways to keep creative connection alive across very different life paths.

Both sons carry their father’s surname as their professional name. That’s not nothing. Craig — not Greisman, not Field — is the name they work under. Steven Craig’s name goes out into the world every time his sons’ work does.

The Financial Picture: Honest Uncertainty

Steven Craig’s net worth is not something that exists in any verified public record. He is not a businessman with a documented portfolio. He is not a celebrity with contracts and salary reports. He is a private individual who lived inside a commune for a significant portion of his adult life.

What can be said sensibly: he was never wealthy in the Hollywood sense. His career in acting did not produce the kind of income that Sally Field’s did. His years in communal living suggest he wasn’t pursuing wealth accumulation. Whatever his financial situation looks like now, it is entirely private, and any number cited by websites claiming to know his net worth is pure fabrication.

His sons, on the other hand, have done well. Peter Craig commands serious screenwriting fees for major studio productions. Eli Craig has built a solid independent film career. Whether Steven Craig participates financially in his sons’ success, or simply watches it with pride from whatever quiet life he has built, is not known.

Where He Is in 2026

In 2026, Steven Craig would be in his late 70s or early 80s, depending on his precise birth year, which is not reliably recorded anywhere.He has maintained his private life with the same consistency that defined the decades after his divorce from Sally Field.

He has never resurfaced publicly. He did not appear at screenings of Top Gun: Maverick. He is not documented attending Eli Craig’s film premieres. He is, by all available evidence, simply living.

That is not a failure. It is a choice. And it is a choice he has maintained longer than most people maintain any choice at all.

Final Words

Steven Craig’s story is one of the genuinely unusual ones in Hollywood’s extended orbit, because it isn’t really a Hollywood story at all. He brushed up against fame, shared a marriage with someone who would become one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, fathered two sons who would find their own forms of creative success, and then built a life deliberately designed to be the opposite of everything Hollywood values.

No public profile. No brand. No legacy management. Just a man who made choices that pointed consistently away from the camera and toward something he found more meaningful — even when that something was a commune in California that most of the culture had already moved on from.

What makes him different from the countless other people who retreated from entertainment industry adjacency is the completeness of it. He didn’t just step back. He vanished into a genuinely different kind of life, and his sons were shaped profoundly by the contrast between their parents’ two worlds.

The Craig name that goes out into the world through Peter’s Oscar nominations and Eli’s cult films is his. That quiet inheritance is Steven Craig’s most visible legacy, and it’s more substantial than most people who fought hard for the spotlight ever managed to leave behind.

FAQs

1. Who is Steven Craig?

e is best known as the first husband of actress Sally Field. They were high school sweethearts in the Pasadena, California area and married in 1968. He worked as an actor and reportedly also as a construction contractor during their marriage. They divorced around 1975.

2. When did Steven Craig and Sally Field get married and divorce?

They married in 1968 and divorced around 1974–1975, after approximately seven years together.

3. Did Steven Craig and Sally Field have children?

Yes. They had two sons: Peter Craig, born November 10, 1969, who became an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (Top Gun: Maverick, The Batman), and Eli Craig, born May 25, 1972, who became a writer-director known for Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

4. Is it true Steven Craig lived in a commune after the divorce?

Yes. After the marriage ended, Steven Craig joined a commune in California. His son Peter Craig has spoken about growing up between his mother’s Hollywood life and his father’s commune existence, calling it a “crazy class dynamic.”

5. What is Steven Craig’s net worth?

There is no verified public figure. He is a private individual with no documented business ventures, celebrity contracts, or financial disclosures. Any net worth figure published online is fabricated.

6. Is Steven Craig still alive?

As of 2026, there is no public record of his death. He would be in his late seventies or early eighties and, based on available evidence, continues to live privately.

7. What does Steven Craig do now?

Unknown. He has maintained complete privacy since the 1970s and has not appeared in any documented public capacity.

8. Did Steven Craig have any notable acting roles?

He is described in various sources as having had an acting career, but no specific notable credits are reliably documented. His acting work, if it existed beyond minor roles, was not significant enough to generate a sustained public record.

9. Did Peter Craig and Eli Craig use their father’s surname professionally?

Yes. Both work under the Craig surname — Peter Craig as a screenwriter and Eli Craig as a director. This is Steven Craig’s name, not their mother’s surname (Field) or that of her second husband (Greisman).

10. Why did Sally Field and Steven Craig divorce?

Neither party has given a detailed public explanation. The general context was a marriage under pressure from Sally’s growing career ambitions and the natural evolution of two young people who had been together since high school. They separated around 1974 and finalized the divorce around 1975.

11. Did Steven Craig and Sally Field remain on good terms after the divorce?

Some sources suggest they maintained a civil co-parenting relationship, as both sons were raised partly in connection with their father’s commune life. No public acrimony has ever been documented between them.

12. Why is there so little information about Steven Craig online?

Because he has deliberately maintained privacy for over fifty years. He gave no interviews after the divorce, built no public profile, and lived inside a commune and later private life entirely outside mainstream documentation. The information that does exist about him comes almost entirely from references in coverage of Sally Field and their sons.

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