Andrew Garfield is ready to talk—about the admirable work of his older brother, a pulmonary specialist in London; about the awe-inspiring experience of seeing New Yorkers take to the streets in the wake of George Floyd’s murder; about the pain of losing his mother, Lynn, to cancer in 2019; about feeling a compulsion to jump into the ocean at Fire Island while preparing to film Tick, Tick…Boom!
The open water jolted him. “It was like I got the full download,” Garfield says. “It reminded me that sons and daughters have been losing their mothers since the dawn of time. And I had this very unique feeling of loss and grief. I’d just jumped into the club of losing the illusion that the person that gives you life is always going to be alive.”
Tick, Tick…Boom! turned out to be the right project for this consciousness-expanding moment. Playing the real-life theater composer Jonathan Larson, who died suddenly before he could see the wild success of his musical Rent, helped Garfield navigate the collective nature of loss.
In conversation, the California-born, England-raised actor is warm and effusive, speaking in meandering but coherent paragraphs. He’s also an astrology-dabbling part-time L.A. resident (Leo sun, Pisces rising, Aquarius moon, if you must know). When discussing acting, he speaks passionately about fate and spontaneity. For him, it is not the result of some calculated process but the expression of insuppressible instinct.
Garfield gave a remarkable string of performances in 2021, playing an alluring L.A. grifter in Gia Coppola’s Mainstream, scammy televangelist Jim Bakker in Michael Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and of course, Larson. They reestablished him as an unabashed man of the heart—or more colloquially, as I suggest to him, a theater kid. “Is it that obvious?” Garfield replies. “Is that clear? I’m proud. I wear that badge proudly. Theater saved my life. To be honest, I was an athlete, and I was a clown. I was an idiot. But until I was 16, I didn’t know theater was a thing. And then, yeah, I fell hard and fast, and there was no going back.”
In 2021, Garfield made a return of a different sort, playing Spider-Man once more in the enormous hit Spider-Man: No Way Home, a multiverse twist in the live-action franchise starring Tom Holland. Before the film premiered, Garfield had to lie about his part in it to the press—over and over, for at least six months. Was that a problem for someone driven by honesty and authenticity? Well, no. “I loved keeping it secret. I was able to get over my ethical, moral dilemma with whether this is a lie that is justifiable. Is this actually a lie, or is this just a fun gift I’m giving to people?”
Garfield’s lifelong affinity for the story of Peter Parker—a working-class kid trying to protect the many from the greed of a few—made his return cathartic. Doing it alongside Tobey Maguire, who also reprised the role, was particularly poignant because Garfield had loved Maguire’s Spider-Man movies: “I was just obsessed with what he was doing.” He suggested to Maguire and the filmmakers that the film feed off that energy. “I have a full heart here, where I want Tobey to be impressed by me,” he told Vanity Fair. “I want him to be my older brother/mentor figure and to tell me I’m doing a good job. I want to compete with him. I want to better him. I want to rib him, have fun with him.”
Still, being an artist is not just about warm, filial feelings; the craft also requires sacrifice. Garfield illustrates that with a visceral anecdote. In 2018, after a two-show day performing the wrenching play Angels in America on Broadway (a part for which he won a Tony), Garfield arrived home exhausted, wanting only to devour a huge steak and watch the NBA playoffs. He bit into his meal, then began to choke.
“There were three levels of consciousness going on,” he says, illuminating each with a different facial expression, his typically mellifluous register descending into hushed tones before rising into exclamation. “One was, I want to enjoy my steak. I deserve my steak and my basketball. Fuck this. The second level was, Holy fuck. I think I might be in danger of actually asphyxiating myself here.” And the third? “Be aware of your behavior, what you’re doing, how you’re feeling, the heat through your body. Remember the smells, remember where you are—because you’re going to maybe have to choke onscreen or onstage at some point. It was that level of insanity of, if you survive this, you can use it in a performance.”
TAILOR, CAROLA BRONISLAVA JAKUBOWSKA; GROOMING, SONIA LEE; MANICURE, EMI KUDO. SET DESIGN, STEFAN BECKMAN. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY PRODN AT ART + COMMERCE. DIRECTED BY CATERINA VIGANÒ; DOP, DOMINIC HAYDN RAWLE; VFX, ANDREA GALVAGNI, ISABELLA FORNASIERO; COLOR GRADING, LEONARDO MARESO, DANIEL PALLUCA; SOUND DESIGN & MIX, SMIDER. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS
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