Andrew Garfield has been enjoying his first Oscar nomination this year. I felt like he was actually a sleeper choice for just the nomination, but Oscar prognosticators have suggested that he might be a lot of Academy voters’ second choice after Will Smith. Anyway, he’s still hustling for Tick Tick Boom, and he’s still hustling for his Oscar campaign. To be fair, he’s equally proud of both, the film and the nomination. Garfield chatted with the Telegraph recently about where he is in his career and it’s sort of a review of everything he’s done already, in his 17 years in the industry. Some highlights:
His mother, who passed in 2019: “She was the embodiment of unconditional love. Of course she was proud of the career achievements I was proud of. But if I’d grown up to be a murderer, she would have shown up at the prison with chocolate chip cookies every week.”
Did he feel snubbed when he didn’t get a BAFTA nom? He starts laughing, then shifts into diplomacy mode. “Honestly, how people vote is none of my business,” he says. Then, after a pause, “I think they acknowledged some great people.” Another pause, and a twinkle. “But do I think Olivia Colman gave one of the best performances of the year? Yes I do.”
His British friends in LA: He came up with Robert Pattinson, Eddie Redmayne, Jamie Dornan and Tom Sturridge. Their collective social life, he says, “was proper Brits-abroad stuff. We’d wake up every morning and it would be ‘Where are we having breakfast?’ ‘When are we going to go to the beach?’ ‘When do you want to play ping-pong?’ We’d go to the Standard Hotel on Sunset Boulevard and order a single cocktail between us so that we could just sit there and swim in the pool.”
On Philip Seymour Hoffman & working with PSH on Death of a Salesman on Broadway: “It’s still really hard to talk about Phil, because on that play we were living out the archetypal father-son relationship together every night.” His fondest memories are of Hoffman approaching him “at the end of the nights when I felt like I hadn’t done enough, or it had just been a complete s— show. And every time I thought that, he would come over and say, ‘You had a great show tonight.’ And I’d say I didn’t feel like I’d been on top of my game, and he’d reply, ‘Yeah, you weren’t. You weren’t doing it. It was doing you.’”
Playing Spider-Man: “I love that character. And taking the role honestly wasn’t just a money gig. But I came to accept that playing it meant having one foot planted in the more mercenary side of the business, no matter how much I personally bumped against the values of it.”
Whether Spider-Man: No Way Home should have been Oscar-nominated: “I don’t know… I mean, it’s the sixth biggest movie in the history of movies. Making a film that a gajillion people want to see together is a miracle. Making a film that an awarding body loves is also a miracle. Sometimes those miracles overlap, and sometimes they don’t. But I personally feel pretty satisfied with the audience response. I think that’s plenty.”
Whether straight actors can or should play gay roles: “I think it’s two different conversations getting conflated. One is about equality of opportunity, and I’m completely in on that. Because we should want a world in which no matter your sexual orientation, your colour or your heritage, everyone gets a fair whack. But the other is about empathic imagination, and if we only allow people to be cast as exactly who they are, it’ll be the death of it. So the two separate conversations have to happen simultaneously. Because I’m not willing to support the death of empathic imagination. It’s what we need most as a culture, and it’s beautiful. It’s the only thing that’s going to save us right now.”
He managed that “should straight actors play gay characters” conversation with so much more nuance than Scarlett “I can play a Japanese tree” Johansson. Garfield is right though – there are two separate conversations, one about equality of opportunity (which is a great way to phrase it) and another one about whether actors can pretend to be someone else or something else. I have to say… if Will Smith wasn’t a favorite across the board for Best Actor, I might actually believe that Garfield had a real shot at it.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
- SANTA MONICA, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – MARCH 06: Andrew Garfield wearing a Valentino suit, Scarosso shoes, an Omega watch, a David Yurman ring, and l.a.Eyeworks sunglasses arrives at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards held at the Santa Monica Beach on March 6, 2022 in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 666710670, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Andrew Garfield, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
- 94th Oscars® nominee Andrew Garfield arrives at the Oscar Nominee Luncheon held at the Fairmont Century Plaza on Monday, March 7, 2022. The 94th Oscars will air on Sunday, March 27, 2022 live on ABC.,Image: 668820845, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: ©A.M.P.A.S. All rights reserved., Model Release: no, Credit line: sb / Avalon
- 94th Oscars® nominee Andrew Garfield arrives at the Oscar Nominee Luncheon held at the Fairmont Century Plaza on Monday, March 7, 2022. The 94th Oscars will air on Sunday, March 27, 2022 live on ABC.,Image: 668820863, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: ©A.M.P.A.S. All rights reserved., Model Release: no, Credit line: sb / Avalon
