Oscar Profile #587: Andrew Garfield

Born August 20, 1983 in Los Angeles, California, Andrew Garfield is the son of an American father and an English mother. He moved with his parents and older brother to Surrey, England when he was three. He holds joint American and British citizenship.

Garfield made his acting debut at 9 in a local Surrey production of Bugsy Malone. He later studied acting when a friend persuaded him to join his acting class in order to have enough students for the program not to be cancelled. He made his British television debut in 2005 and his American film debut in in 2007’s Lions for Lambs where he was fifth billed behind Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and Michael Pena. Later that year he won a BAFTA for his TV work in Boy A.

Both BAFTA and the Golden Globes, as well as various critics groups nominated him for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in 2010’s The Social Network. That same year, he received a British Independent Film Award nomination for Never Let Me Go in support of Carey Mulligan.

In 2012, the young actor took Broadway by storm, earning a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actor in the Mike Nichols directed revival of Death of a Salesman in support of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Later that ear, he took the movie world by storm as Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man, playing his fictional childhood hero in the second of three successful franchises based on the Marvel comic book hero.

In 2014, Garfield had a box-office hit with the second film in his Spider-Man series, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but the series was discontinued after just two films unlike the one of a decade earlier starring Tobey Maguire which went to three films. That same year, he starred in 99 Homes for which co-star Michael Shannon received most of the acclaim.

In 2016, he had powerful roles in two films, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and Martin Scorsese’s Silence, earning an Oscar nomination for the former.

In 2017, he won acclaim for the London revival of Angels in America for which he won numerous awards including a Tony when the paly transferred to Broadway the following year. While in England, he filmed Andy Serkis’ directorial debut film, Breathe opposite Claire Foy, for which Serkis received several awards.

In 2021, Garfield had his best year so far. He starred opposite Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye for which she was nominated for an Oscar, tck…tick…Boom! for which he himself received his second Oscar nomination, and Spider-Man: No Way Home in which he and Toby Maguire reprised their Spider-Man roles in support of the current Spider-Man, Tom Holland.

Up next for the busy actor are roles in two TV mini-series, Under the Banner of Heaven and the revival of Brideshead Revisited in which he plays the role made famous by Jeremy Irons in 1981.

Andrew Garfield is at the height of his career at 38.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010), directed by David Fincher

Fincher’s highly lauded film about the creation of the social networking site that later became known as Facebook was nominated for 8 Oscars, winning 3 for Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, and Original Score. It had also been nominated for Best Picture, Actor (Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg), Director, Cinematography, and Sound Mixing. Missing from the nominations list was Garfield for his portrayal of Zuckerberg’s sensitive initial partner, Eduardo Saverin. Garfield had originally auditioned to play Zuckerberg, but Fincher felt that he would be better suited to playing Severin, which he proved to be.

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012), directed by Marc Webb

Garfield made an engaging Peter Parker AKA Spider-Man supported by Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field as Aunt May. Critics were astonished that the new series repeated the origin story of the previous series instead of taking up where that one left off, but audiences came anyway. The 2014 sequel was also a reprise of action from the previous series. It would take the appearances of Garfield and Tobey Maguire from the first series in support of third Spider-Man Tom Holland 2021’s blockbuster hit, Spider-Man: No Way Home to resolve the problem to the satisfaction of all.

HACKSAW RIDGE (2014), directed by Mel Gibson

Garfield received his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of World War II American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who repeatedly risked his life to bring out the wounded during the Battle of Okinawa while refusing to shoot anyone himself. In so doing, he became the first recipient of the Medal of Honor without having fired a single shot. The highly acclaimed anti-war film received numerous critics’ awards. It was nominated for six Oscars and won two for Best Film editing and Best Sound Mixing. It had also been nominated for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, and Sound Editing.

SILENCE (2016), directed by Martin Scorsese

Scorsese’s nearly three-hour religious epic received universal acclaim but few awards despite its classic cinematography and production design to say nothing of its strong performances led by Garfield. Garfield and Adam Driver play 17th Century Portuguese Jesuit priests who find it hard to believe that their mentor (Liam Neeson) has abandoned his faith and implore their superior (Ciarin Hinds) to allow them to travel to Japan in search of the truth. There they find that he has not only abandoned his faith but renounced it under torture by a Japanese Inquisitor (Issei Ogata). The same fate awaits Garfield and Driver, or does it?

TICK…TICK…BOOM! (2021), directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Garfield received his second Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of struggling composer Jonathan Larson on the cusp of his 30th birthday in this adaptation of the musical that was to break his 12-year losing streak in attempting to get the many musicals he had written actually performed. Set in 1990, hanging over the film is the knowledge that the real-life Larson would die five years later of an aneurism on the eve of the opening of his Broadway musical, Rent, which renders this bittersweet concoction even more memorable. It marked the feature film directorial debut of actor-composer Miranda.