Andrew Garfield On A Career That Is Going Tick Tick BOOM! – The Actor’s Side

Andrew Garfield is having quite a year. He has received his second Oscar nomination as Best Actor for his role as Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick…BOOM!; won more acclaim for playing another real-life character, Jim Bakker, opposite Jessica Chastain (who just won a SAG Award) for The Eyes of Tammy Faye; and starred in the indie Mainstream earlier in the year. And he wrapped up 2021 with a much acclaimed surprise return to Peter Parker/Spider-Man mode in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which has turned out to be the biggest movie of 2021 by a country mile and one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Not bad for 12 months’ work.

It is his role as Larson that perhaps provided the biggest challenge in a musical that represents Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first feature film directorial outing. For Garfield, who had never sung professionally, and never acted in a movie musical and all that entails, it was hard work but certainly paid off with a praised performance that added to résumé that shows great versatility in every corner of acting.

Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire & Andrew Garfield Reunite To Talk Playing Spider-Man And Why ‘No Way Home’ Was Such An Emotional Experience

Of course, Garfield is no stranger to awards having won several including a Tony for the revival of Angels in America, and another nomination for the Mike Nichols staging of Death of a Salesman on Broadway. He has worked for a litany of top directors including Nichols, David Fincher on The Social Network, Martin Scorsese on Silence, Mel Gibson on Hacksaw Ridge (for which he won his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing another real-life hero Desmond Doss, in the WWII-set war film), and actually in his first film Lions For Lambs in which he found himself acting opposite Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise and that film’s director Robert Redford.

We talk about this remarkable career as Garfield joins me in conversation for this episode of my Deadline video series The Actor’s Side. We actually start when I reveal to this very British actor that I was surprised to find out we actually are both native Angelenos, born in L.A. — although I never left and he moved to England at age 3 which turned out to be a very good thing for his future career on stage, screen and television. I point out though he is actually eligible now, in both age and birthplace, to run for U.S. president — or maybe he will just want to play one.

To watch and get “the actor’s side” from Andrew Garfield, click on the video above.