Andrew Garfield is having the time of his life

Andrew Garfield is hungry. Sitting down at a restaurant in the heart of TriBeCa around the same time that commuters are rushing off to work, the actor immediately fires off an order for a Capital-B Breakfast: scrambled eggs “with all the stuff,” very crispy bacon, home fries, toast, jam, an oat milk latte with a side of honey. When the food arrives, Garfield enthusiastically digs in, as if he’s fortifying himself for a long day of press duties. Unlike most starving eaters suddenly presented with a full plate, however, he doesn’t rush. There’s a sense that Garfield wants to savour every bite, to really take in the taste of things. Besides, what’s the hurry? Better to take your time and really enjoy it.

Time has been on Garfield’s mind a lot recently, and not just because he’s hitting the promotional trail for We Live in Time, the romantic dramedy co-starring Florence Pugh that charts a couple’s ups and downs out of chronological order. (It opened wide this past weekend.) Some of it has to do with his mother, who passed away in 2019 and whose loss still affects him greatly. A good deal of it has to do with turning 40 and, like many folks, experiencing something like a midlife crisis — or, as Garfield puts it, a “midlife rejiggering.”

And there’s also the fact that the actor had taken a self-imposed hiatus from working for a bit, hitting the professional pause button so he could spend his time surfing, reading, seeing friends, and simply “refilling the coffers of life experience.” The opportunity to slow things down and really absorb what was happening around him was a necessity. The Oscar-nominated actor had accomplished more than he could have possibly dreamed of in the previous 20 years of his career on stage and screen. Now he wanted to take a moment to figure out what might be next.

The answer, Garfield says in between bites of breakfast, is a renewed appreciation for what he does, and a doubling down of working on projects that remind him of why he was attracted to expressing himself through acting in the first place. (He’s already finished shooting two films, including one with director Luca Guadagnino and Julia Roberts, and is in talks to play famed astronomer Carl Sagan in a third project.) In a wide-ranging conversation, Garfield talks about why We Live in Time inspired him to return from his sabbatical, what he’s learned about himself, the differences between being on a David Fincher set and a Martin Scorsese set, the bind between him and his fellow Spider-Men, and a lot more.

You had talked about being on something of a self-imposed sabbatical for the past few years.

I think I was refilling the coffers of experience, for sure. I think that’s definitely part of it. I would say it was more kind of a break of confusion — as in, confusion about how to proceed in this particular moment, in this particular time, in this particular world and culture, and at my particular age.

Proceed as an artist or as a person?

Both, really. What I previously thought I was meant to bring to the world with acting, and reflecting on the effectiveness of that as I was moving into my forties — I was realizing that I’m not going to single-handedly change the world. And there’s kind of a lot of fantastic ego death that happens.

This sounds like a midlife crisis.

Some people would call it a midlife crisis. I would call it a midlife rejiggering, reassembling, reordering. Everything falls apart as is meant to, I think, so that you can reassemble in a way that is more true to reality. I think it has a lot to do with losing my mother as well. I was suddenly feeling like life is much more complex and much more difficult, but also much more joyful and much more mysterious than I had previously been led to believe. I think we all go through this natural shift. I was just lucky enough that I got to do it in a way that was conscious, and do it in a way where I could take a break and really indulge it.

What was it about We Live in Time in particular that kind of made you think, “OK, I’m ready to come back and do this”?

I hadn’t planned on doing anything, really. But then this film felt like it was asking all the same questions that I was asking anyway. It was as if … as an actor, you very rarely get to feel like you’re an autonomous artist in the way that, like, if I was a sculptor or a painter, I could go to my studio and I could just create out of that place, then give it to the public, right? But as an actor, you’re dependent on, you know, a crew and a budget …

Even if you construct a black-box theatre in the back of your apartment, you’ve still got to bring a crowd in.

Exactly! And it just happened to align in that kind of, “Oh, we can all go to the studio together on this.” I had the opportunity to participate in something that was the shape of my soul in that very moment. And it was just a kind of beautifully aligned synchronicity. It’s real kismet that it came around when it did.

I think the story’s universality was appealing in the sense that, if I’m so moved and touched by this — if I feel so seen by this piece of writing, and can bring all of my own personal experience to it — then it’s gonna feel that way to an audience as well. I do think audiences are longing for these particular stories right now.

You mean seeing movies about the human experience?

[Laughs] Something like that, yeah.

You and Florence Pugh have been incredibly effusive about working with each other while doing the press rounds for the movie, and very complimentary about each other’s talents and skill sets. Did it take a while for you to both find a rhythm together, or did you both sync up pretty quickly?

Yeah, it was relatively fast. At the same time, it felt like we didn’t rush it. It’s interesting, we didn’t feel that we had to force or push anything. The back and forth we had in playing these characters just happened very quickly and very organically. Which was a remarkable thing for me because, since I trust so easily, I’ve had to learn to lead with a little bit more discernment.

When you say you trust too easily, do you mean…

Humans. I trust humans in general way too easily [laughs], because I long to be that trustworthy naturally, I think. But you know that that has been troublesome in certain ways for me. Now, I’m much better at slowly letting people know me, and as I get to know them, I can open up more.… It feels unfortunate but naive to think otherwise. So I started off trying to just be very professional: “Let’s see if this might work.” And very quickly, I could instinctively feel that I was safe with her, and we could travel to very vulnerable places together. I think she felt the same with me. Thank God.

I think we managed to find a comfort and a kind of ease with each other. It was sad when it was over, because we had to let that kind of imagined, created relationship go. Because look: It’s a weird job, what we do. The closeness that you get to cultivate with another human being as a creative collaborator is profound, if you’re lucky enough to be connected to someone that wants the same things that you want, actually pushes you further than you thought you would go, and vice versa. It’s like this little bubble of safety. And then you get to go, “Well, that was fun.” And you bow deeply to each other and thank each other for the time, and go back to being friends and work colleagues.

You get warmed up, you establish a connection — then the whole thing wraps and you go home.

Right! Then you kind of start dreaming about other collaborations you can do together. Which we’d both like to do. Florence and I are both like, “Oh, we want to hold on to each other in this creative way. Let’s do more of this.”

Was the fact that you’re getting the story of this couple completely jumbled and out of order something that you, Florence, and John [Crowley, the director] talked about — that when you put this one scene over here versus something that’s kind of happening right over here, it changes the ebb and flow of the story?

We didn’t, though I do think what’s wonderful about the film, what I love about it is it adds another element when you think about: OK, what is the writer connecting about these two scenes? What’s the invisible thread between this point and this point? I think that that’s kind of the magic trick of the story, hopefully, is that it does call into question the nature of time and the nature of memory.

Did working on this change how you think about those things in your own life?

Completely. And there are certain things that, you know … I remember the video store I used to go to when I was seven years old, and then I see how that connects directly to the Criterion Closet that I was just allowed to be in. It was one of those “Oh, my God” moments of connection. Like, if my father hadn’t loved movies, if he hadn’t been obsessed with, say, Tampopo, and such a broad variety of films, my life would be different. If we hadn’t gone to Video Vision in Tattenham Corner in Surrey, and if I hadn’t picked up The Monster Squad one of the first times, there was no way I would be able to have that moment that brought me into the Criterion Closet, you know? I think that’s what’s beautiful about life when you’re living it, hopefully, aligned to your own instincts. And sometimes, of course, that involves getting very, very lost in order to come back onto the path. I think that’s what the film does quite beautifully.

You’d already been working in the theatre, and in projects like the Red Riding trilogy (2009), for years by the time The Social Network came out — but that’s likely where a lot of folks first registered who you were as an actor. Did you feel a shift after that had come out, personally or professionally?

Definitely. It was exciting to be part of something that people had such a strong response to, and the kind of universal excitement for. It was one of those films that fulfilled a lot of different niches — it was high art to people, and felt like popcorn entertainment to others. It felt very current and somehow very timeless. Which, you know, that’s Aaron [Sorkin] and David [Fincher]. Obviously, they’re brilliant. And I think, like, particularly in the world of the film, which is cutthroat and dog-eat-dog, you do have this one character that seems to have a deeper emotional, humanistic kind of ethic. Or at least, that’s the way it was written and the way that I played it, and that’s the way it was.

Your character is the conscience of the film.

He’s kind of the conscience, yeah. If the film has a heart, he’s it. Whether that portrayal was true to life or not is kind of up for grabs. But I remember when we were touring around colleges when we were first showing it, and the response from college kids was a little alarming. I did feel like, “Oh, wow, fuck, something just shifted.” Because we all love someone being able to righteously smash a fucking laptop during the betrayal of a best friend in the middle of their new company, and, like, threaten them with legal fucking action. It’s like it’s the kind of dream scenario that we all wish we could play out in some degree.

Smashing a laptop felt like wish fulfillment in 2010. Now …

It would feel like something 100 times more cathartic [laughs]. It’s funny, when I think about the moment you’re talking about, I think about Mike Nichols, and him seeing the film and then asking me to come and do Death of a Salesman. But even before that … I had worked with Spike Jonze and Mark Romanek, two of David’s counterparts and allies from that same generation of music-video makers and filmmakers. I had done Never Let Me Go with Mark, who told Spike that I wanted to play Frisbee in London while spike was there editing Where the Wild Things Are. So he was like, “Hey, do you want to come meet Spike?” And I was like, “Nope” — because he was my hero since I was a skater kid. But I grabbed my balls and my bike, and I cycled to Hyde Park, and we were all just kind of hanging playing Frisbee. Spike was putting together this short film, and he was like, “Mark tells me you’re an actor. OK, well, I might send you a thing.” And I’m like, “[Gulp.] Sure, sure, sure.” Then I worked with him on his short I’m Here.

So when The Social Network came along as an audition and I told Spike about it, he was like, “Cool, man — let’s make a video for David!” I was like, “No, no, no.” And he just filmed this self-tape where he’s saying, “[In lackadaisical Spike Jonze voice] David, this is this guy, he’s the real deal, you better hire him. This is Andrew Garfield! He’s meant to be in the Facebook movie!” [Laughs.] So it’s all these different connections. And in the spirit of this thing about time and memory and connection that we’re talking about: Me working with Mark means I meet my hero Spike, which means I get to make this incredible movie, which means that I got to do one of my favourite plays of all time with Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of my favourite actors of all time. So, yeah. I felt a shift for sure.

Let’s talk about Death of a Salesman for a second. You got to work with Mike Nichols on one of the major plays of the 20th century.

I mean, it’s hard to sum up, because the whole experience was so rich. And every day, every moment there was something. Being around Mike — especially in this period of his life when he’s in his eighties, and he knows he’s in the back stretch, as it were — I witnessed someone so acutely aware that he couldn’t take any of it with him. There was such an incredible sense of generosity; you felt like he was just giving himself away at every single opportunity, as if, like, as if he was seeding the ground everywhere he went. “Everything that I have, everything that I’ve learned, everything that I know, every every struggle, every difficulty — I want to plant it all back.”

There was one thing that he said to me. Very early on in rehearsals, I was kvetching about something, and I was neurotic about, you know, whatever I had to offer. And he said, “You know what? I just really don’t worry about you at all.” I’m like, “Oh my god. Why is that?” “[In Mike Nichols’ voice] Well, because you’re just like me. You really don’t think highly of yourself.” And it was like this beautiful blessing of a wound that was like, you should probably ease up on it a little bit. Because guess what? It’s not going anywhere. The divine dissatisfaction will always take care of itself. You’re not meant to think you’re any good. And in fact, that’s the thing that will keep you being in some realm of watchable. [Laughs.] It was just the thing I needed to hear. It made what I felt was some sort of curse of never being satisfied that was turned into a blessing.

You know how people become better tennis players by playing tennis with better players? Was that what it was like acting against Philip Seymour Hoffman every night on that stage?

Yes! I mean, I felt it with him, with Linda [Emond], with the whole cast, really. But, yeah, the time I spent with Phil holds a very special place in my heart. He’s still one of my favourite actors of all time. It was like he’s just a kind of divining rod for the truth, you know? And like he’s not looking for the bells and whistles, the fancy accoutrements with a piece like Salesman. He’s drilling for the core of who this man is. And just the presence that he had onstage, and the presence that he had with his fellow actors, and the kind of the passion and the longing and the hurt and the heartbreak — it was gorgeous to watch. On nights where I felt like I was off or maybe I didn’t feel like I was bringing as much to the table, he would always say to me, “Hey, you were great tonight.” Whether that was a move or whether that was him going, you know, “Simpler is better,” I’m not sure. Either way, it was such a great compliment to get from him!

What is the experience of being on a Martin Scorsese set versus being on a David Fincher set versus being on a Luca Guadagnino set?

With Marty on Silence, he was so excited and happy to be making this film finally. And it was hard locations, all these scenes out in the wilderness of Taiwan. Lotta big, long walks up big hills. Marty’s not a young man anymore. But he was sprightly, joyful. And then occasionally he would require absolute silence on set, which I absolutely adored. You’d see him in a meditative state, with this subject, with this material, with his own faith and his own spirituality, and it was incredibly inspiring. I was in a very kind of focused, concentrated, attentive, quiet, intense place during that film. But he was just joyful, cracking jokes and having a good time.

When he showed that film to the pope, didn’t the pope say you could have been ordained?

I’m gonna choose to imagine he was he was being serious, but I’m sure that it was more of a tongue-in-cheek thing.

Well, that pope was known for his sense of humour.

[Laughs.] A hilarious pope, yes. You know, one day I asked Fincher, “So the thing about the high amount of takes — what’s that about?” He’s got a lot of different answers, but one of the answers that I liked was: “It’s really simple. We’re all here. We’re all being paid to do the most lucky fucking job in the world. Who are we if we’re not gonna squeeze every single drop of juice out of the orange?” Like, that’s a privilege what we’re doing. I love that. So that was his whole spirit during that. And then Luca, he’s another radical artist. He will do one or two takes, and then we’ll move on. So that was the main difference there. But again, someone who is exuberant and joyful and passionate and very Italian. All three of them are visionaries, in my mind. I think the thing that binds all these people that you mentioned is that they love making movies so fucking much.

Does it surprise you that Under the Silver Lake has morphed into this modern cult classic? There’s a real cult behind that movie now

I’m really glad that people have come around to it. I love the film, and it’s just an unwieldy thing and completely unique — and you know how rare that is now. So I think that’s what David [Robert Mitchell, the director] wanted. David wanted people’s obsession to get stoked, just like his obsession is stoked in the film. I mean, it’s an obsessive movie. It’s like some fucked-up, privileged white California-stoner kid’s version of, like, Man’s Search for Meaning.

That’s a deep-cut reference, man.

[Laughs.] But it really is like the most bastardized version of a Viktor Frankl story, though. You know, the idea of: What do we have that is meaningful anymore? How do we access meaning now, in a world where everything’s provided and we’re numbed out with entertainment and commodification, and there’s no need for the human imagination anymore. There’s a lot going on underneath all the comedy and the weirdness, and that’s why I think people who’ve found the movie really respond to it now.

You have a tendency to play a lot of people with religious affiliations that are spiritual seekers. And I realize those two aren’t the same thing, but I would have to imagine that you can’t exit an experience like playing that Jesuit priest in Silence, or do the research you must have done on Latter-day Saints to play the character in Under the Banner of Heaven, or Prior Walter in Angels in America—

Or Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick … Boom!

You would include him in that list as well?

One hundred percent. There was definitely a spiritual element to playing Jonathan, I think. He’s just worshiping at the altar of musical theatre. He’s praying to the ancestors. There’s definitely a religious thing there.

Interesting. How have playing those kinds of parts affected your own relationship with spirituality?

It’s weird, because it’s kind of transcendent of whatever particular religion or spiritual school that I’m studying — it doesn’t matter because it all sort of affects me the same way. But you know, I still feel like studying with Father Jim Martin in preparation for Silence was one of the great profound joys and privileges in my life. I had a year to prep, and it was life-changing. But I think it’s like a chicken-and-egg thing, because I’m someone who’s just kind of drawn to esoteric things. And I think storytelling is its own spiritual practice. The same goes for art. I just went and saw this surrealist exhibit that’s at the Pompidou in Paris right now, and it was like, “Oh, yeah, everyone’s on the trip.” Like, every one of these artists is trying to, like, narrow their eyes enough to be able to see through this veil that separates this world from the other. I’ve always just been drawn to that, and I think these films, these characters, were an opportunity for me to indulge in a longing that I have to indulge in my own personal feelings about what an artist is meant to do.

So you feel like you’re drawn to these types of roles more than others?

Maybe, but it’s more about having a sense of feeling I have more to give to those types of movies than others. I mean, not every role is for me. There are only certain specific ones that I’m meant to do, where … It’s so funny — and I’m not going to say what they are — but there are at least two films that I was offered that have gone on to win Academy Awards for the people that took those parts. Even the people producing them were like, “You realize this is, like, your Oscar film!” And I was like, “I actually don’t think so. I think it may be someone else’s.” Because if I do it, it’s for the wrong reason. If I don’t feel personally compelled, what’s on paper could be one of those kind of performances that will suffer if I do it. So I pass, and lo and behold, someone else turned out to be the right person and took home Oscars.

How did that make you feel? Justified?

It made me feel jealous as fuck, of course! [Laughs.] The bigger feeling, however, was: No regrets. No regrets at all. This was meant for this person. I was raised in a competitive household, with my dad and my brother, but I think I owe a lot to my chosen profession, because while a competitive nature can be helpful in certain areas, it can get in the way of the creative work reaching its potential. You don’t want to take something just because you think it can win you an award.

Since we’re talking about your attraction to these types of parts: You’ve said that when you played Jim Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, you felt like he was one of the most religious but least spiritual roles you’d ever played. Can you expand on that?

Yeah, I think he was seduced unconsciously, and you could almost say that he was like a young soul or something. This is maybe his first go around, if you believe in reincarnation. Which I don’t know if I do, but it felt like he had desires that were inherently egoistic and all about the small-s self, and then he found a piece of scripture about prosperity, and unconsciously — or maybe accidentally on purpose — misinterpreted it to support a whole new type of evangelism centered around the prosperity doctrine. He’s a gajillionaire who manipulated people out of their money in the name of God, and actually believes that he’s doing God’s work. And then in jail, he gets back into Bible study, and he realizes, in the translation of the word “prosperity” from the original Hebrew, it was meant as spiritual prosperity. The whole thing was just a poor, diluted translation of the Hebrew word. And he was like, “[In Jim Bakker’s voice] Oh. Oh, darn it!”

There are only four people who understand what it’s like to be the Beatles. And you could argue there are only three people who understand the great power that comes with the great responsibility of playing an iconic superhero.

[Laughs] A hilarious comparison!

When you, Tobey Maguire, and Tom Holland did Spider-Man: No Way Home, did you guys talk about the sort of unspoken — or maybe it’s very much spoken — bond that you guys have by playing this character who means so much to literally millions of human beings?

That’s really beautifully said. Yeah, I know what you mean. It reminds me of a moment on set where we shot some really fun stuff. It was feeling really, really good. And, yes, we were bonding and talking, and, you know, trading war stories and comparing our psychological wounds, just as actors that have gone through our own personal experiences. We would start improvising around those types of things; one of my favourite bits was when both Toby and Tom were bonding over fighting an alien, and my Peter Parker goes, “[In whiny Peter Parker voice] I never fought an alien. I want to fight aliens!” And Toby’s like, “Hey, man, no, you’re great, you’re amazing. Don’t be hurt.” It’s like, my Parker needed to hear that. I needed to hear that.

There was this moment … we were shooting this action sequence, where there’s the three of us standing next to each other, looking at Doctor Strange, and we’re all just kind of there holding a pose. And when we finished that first take, we all looked at each other and went, “This is awkward as fuck, right? It’s not just me feeling this?” And each of us was like, “Yeah, this is really … no. Let’s go talk to Jon [Watts, the director]. So we all go up to him, he’s standing by the monitors, and we say, “Jon. Dude. We gotta fucking rethink this. It’s not going to work.” He’s like, “What are you talking about? It’s the greatest fucking moment in the movie!” He turns and cues up the footage of this three-shot, at the very moment that I just land into the frame. It’s just the three of us standing there, sticking up for each other. And all of us look at him and go, “Oh, yeah, that’s good. Sold [laughs]. We can feel as awkward as we fucking want, but just, like, having the three of us in the same frame? It’s just like, forgive the expression, a fan’s wet dream. It’s just an orgiastic moment for anyone that loves this character so much that just seeing the three of us sharing physical space is enough. And it’s moments like that where you realize how special that thing the three of us share really is.

How much musical theatre had you done prior to Tick Tick … Boom!?

None. None at all.

You’ve mentioned that Lin-Manuel Miranda saw you do Angels in America and figured that if you can go through the physical and emotional stamina of doing that play six days a week, then you could handle probably handle a musical. It still feels like those are two very different things, and this was a massive leap of faith on both of your parts.

I agree, but he explained this to me later on, how doing Angels — which is nine hours of screaming and shrieking, combined with the fact that I never missed a show during the entire run — was enough to convince him. Then it was a question of whether I was tone-deaf, which, thankfully, I was not. And whether a year was enough time for me to work with a coach to get my voice where it needed to go. He wasn’t worried about the rest. He knew I’d become possessed by this. He knew I’d find some sort of connection to it.

How was it for you to not only jump into the musical-theatre deep end, but also do it while playing this person who’s lionized in the Broadway world?

Oh, you have no idea. It’s not like Jon was a person from times gone by — he has friends and family members who are very much around. You’re talking about someone who means so much to the Broadway-theatre community — and the whole musical-theatre community throughout the world — but also someone in which people go, “He was my best friend, he was my son, he was my brother.” What are you gonna do? The necessity of honoring someone like him was all the fuel I needed. I fell in love with Jonathan Larson the same way that everyone who knew him fell in love with him, and that helped me just tap into it.

Are you getting something different out of acting now than you were then?

Yeah, I think going back to the first thing we were talking about … it feels like I’m re-finding my way. I’m finding my way back into the gift of, I don’t know, like the golden feather that fell in front of me when I was 16 that I picked up, and all at once feeling like, “This is the rest of your life. It’s also going to be a lot of trouble, and the relationship to it is going to change and shift. But it’s yours.” And so I’m trying to reestablish a relationship with this thing, because it is different now. My priorities are changing, my longings are changing. The only constant is that I do have this medium, whether it’s theatre, film, TV, radio, or otherwise, to communicate and to express myself. For that, I’m very, very fucking grateful. If I can keep feeling excited about the kind of storytelling that reminds me of our interconnectedness and the universality of the human experience, then I think I will be safe to continue working until I eat my last bowl of pasta [laughs].

From Rolling Stone US