“No.I don’t have the faintest idea of who I am or how the world works, I just thirst for knowledge, truth and wisdom ». Andrew Garfield told me this in the days of The Battle of Hacksaw Ridgethe historical drama directed by Mel Gibson: he had just earned his first Oscar nomination as a conscientious objector soldier. It was 2016 and the Anglo-American actor already had a career of rigorous choices for films with significant themes behind him.
Andrew Garfield as “Jim Bakker” in THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2021 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
We had seen it in and Social Network by David Fincherthe film about Facebook’s tumultuous early years, in Silence by Martin Scorsese – he was a Jesuit missionary in Japan in the 1600s – and in 99 Homes by Ramin Bahrani. In 2012 he was nominated for the prestigious Tony Award for Death of a traveling salesman, directed by Mike Nichols, won him over in 2018 with the revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. To complete the picture it was then received triumphantly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where with the character of Spider Man has earned colossal figures over time.
Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) first girlfriend in The Amazing Spiderman. The two had a relationship that began in 2012 right on the set with constant back and forth.
From Peter Parker to Jonathan Larson
Garfield discusses the past with detachment and discretion, with gratitude for the undeniable rise, but when it comes to the musical Tick, Tick … Boom !, the story of the initial failure of the composer and playwright Jonathan Larson (who with Rent then revolutionized Broadway), the face lights up. Andrew cannot control his enthusiasm for an experience he considers mystical. Playing Larson, who died suddenly at 35 from an aneurysmbefore finally being recognized as an artist, he allowed him to express every creative chord: «I used the whole body» he explains «the voice, the soul and the heart, to express what it means to be human». Larson’s creative impetus, his desire to exorcise disease and death – in New York it was the 80s and 90s, devastating for the gay community due to AIDS – for the thirty-seven-year-old actor it turned into a personal trial, “of pain, mourning, finally gratitude”.
I listen to him, on the small stage of an arthouse cinema in Santa Monica, as he tells us about his latest adventure. In khaki pants, a neutral-colored jacket, Andrew still looks like the usual teenager, polite, thin and ethereal, with many fundamental questions, today perhaps with some more conviction. He hasn’t changed much, all in all, since the days of Do not leave me, when we met – it was 2010 – for the first time. The film was based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s magnificent novel about organ exchange, and even then with him the guarantee was to have deep conversations: calm, thoughtful while describing his character, he became talkative if he went into socio-political issueshe was indignant at the social injustices.
Tick, Tick… Boom!
Today the tone is intimist, and it is no coincidence that his highly emotional interpretation has won over American critics (“One of the most exciting performances of the year” writes Entertainment Weekly), a Golden Globe for Best Actor in Musical and Comedy, and an Oscar nomination, in the company of sacred monsters like Denzel Washington, Will Smith, and award-winning Benedict Cumberbatch. Perhaps he even stole Leonardo DiCaprio’s place – comment some experts in the sector. For Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical for dramaturgy, making his feature film debut as a director with Tick, Tick… Boom!, Garfield feels boundless admiration: “Lin calls me one day and asks if I can sing; I say no, I have never done musical theater, but he insists and has a magical effect, he transmits a contagious energy, he makes you believe that everything is possible ».
Andrew accepts the bet, works for more than a year with a music teacher, immerses himself in the world of Larson and the off-Broadway theater of those decades, and throws himself into that void, “vulnerable, naked, with no safety net. An experience that brought me back together: I was going through a particular moment, my mother had recently passed away. There, on that set, I was able to express pain and nostalgia, along with the love never expressed for her. I had lost my angel ».
Looking for a way out
He speaks of his mother modestly: “She had a great influence on me. Perhaps she could not see and understand everything, but she knew that I was an unhappy teenager, she felt that I was lost along the way ». He remembers a childhood dedicated above all to sports activities with a father who was a swimming coach. “Sports were my strength, my relief and I had to give it up: I broke my wrist while skateboarding and suffered a concussion while playing rugby. It was my mother who suggested a way out: “You are a creative boy, why don’t you try to do something different?” ». Garfield joined a theater club organized by the school and there, in the last two years of high school, he met the mentor who would save him, Mr. Philip Patong. “Tell me what to do, where I am, where I have to go, I asked. I felt like I was in a sequence of The Truman Show, I knew there was a door somewhere I could open, but I couldn’t find it“.
Each project marked a phase of life
When we met for Silence, the film that narrated the persecutions suffered by Christians in medieval Japan, his identification with the character of Father Rodrigues was such that during the shooting of the film Andrew questioned his relationship with God: “It took me a year to feel ready for that part, “he told me then. “And thanks also to my teacher, Father James Martin, the film became a profoundly transformative experience, transcendental: Rodrigues was no longer a role to play, he represented a high form of spirituality ». Garfield talks about it with moments of self-irony, mentioning Tammy Faye’s eyesthe film that tells the story of television preachers Tammy and Jim Bakker, still in theaters.
«Jim was for decades the most popular protagonist of the religious scene, it was he who created the reality show, who revolutionized the Church, who made it“ electric ”. Bakker’s message was the triumph of capitalism: to win by focusing on Christ rather than by dedicating your life to him“. He is a character who wanted to understand but couldn’t love, he explained to us during our visit to the set in North Carolina. “I’m not sure I’m totally convincing,” he would say then. Today you ask him how he managed to enter and disappear in the soul and skin of Jonathan Larson, to sing and dance like in a musical, and he almost shouts at the miracle: “Tick Tick… Boom is the most personal, the most expensive of my projects; honoring John has done me good for the spirit, and he has healed me. An incredible therapy ».
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