Andrew Garfield

• 1. Introduction

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  Andrew Garfield, the English and American actor born on the 20th of August 1983, very nearly never acted at all. He had planned to study business. At 16, a friend talked him into taking theatre studies at A-level, because the class was exactly one pupil short of being allowed to run.

  That small favour led to West End stages, superhero films, musicals, war dramas and a Mormon detective series. It also led to a career in which an actor who rarely discusses his private life has spoken openly about faith, grief and where he belongs.

  How did a business-minded teenager become an actor trusted with real people's lives on screen? Why did one of the best-known screen Spider-Men step aside, and then come back? And what pulled him again and again toward stories of conviction?

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• 2. Surrey Roots, Stage First

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  Los Angeles, California, is where Andrew Russell Garfield was born, but he left it at the age of three. His mother, Lynn, came from Essex, England, and his father, Richard, from California, although Richard's own parents were also from the United Kingdom. The family moved to England, and Garfield grew up in Epsom, Surrey.

  The name Garfield was originally Garfinkel. On his father's side he is Jewish, and he describes himself as a "Jewish artist". His paternal grandparents came from immigrant families who settled in London after leaving Poland, Russia and Romania.

  In April 2025, the British television series Who Do You Think You Are? took him to Kielce, Poland, to trace those roots. There he learned that a great-grandaunt, Ruchla Garfinkiel, had married the first cousin of Władysław Szpilman, the man at the centre of the 2002 film The Pianist.

  Richard and Lynn ran a small interior-design business. Lynn also worked as a teaching assistant at a nursery school, and Richard became head coach of the Guildford City Swimming Club. Garfield has an older brother who is an NHS doctor at Royal Brompton Hospital, and as a child Garfield himself was a gymnast and a swimmer.

  At the age of nine, Garfield began acting classes in Guildford and appeared in a youth theatre production of Bugsy Malone. He then joined a small youth theatre workshop group in Epsom. His schooling ran through Priory Preparatory School in Banstead and City of London Freemen's School in Ashtead, followed by three years at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.

  Starbucks gave him his first job, and he was moved between three branches in Golders Green and Hendon.

  Graduating in 2004, Garfield worked mainly on stage. That year he won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Newcomer, for playing Billy in Kes at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. He returned to the Royal Exchange the following year as Romeo, and in 2006 the Evening Standard Theatre Awards named him Outstanding Newcomer.

  Channel 4's teen drama Sugar Rush gave him his British television debut in 2005. In 2007 he reached a wider public in series three of the BBC's Doctor Who, in the two episodes "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks". Garfield said it was "an honour" to be part of the show. Variety listed him among its "10 Actors to Watch" in October 2007.

  The following month, in November 2007, two very different screen projects would reach audiences.

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• 3. From Boy A to Facebook

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  Lions for Lambs, released in November 2007, was Garfield's American film debut. He played an American university student alongside Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. "I'm just lucky to be there working on the same project as them, although I don't really expect to be recognized later by audiences", he told Variety in 2007. Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe described his work as "a willing punching bag for the movie's jabs and low blows".

  The same month, the Channel 4 drama Boy A showed him as a notorious killer trying to build a new life after prison. The role won him the 2008 BAFTA Award for Best Actor. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal called the performance "phenomenal". John Hartl of The Seattle Times noted the range on display and wrote that "Garfield always manages to capture his passion".

  In 2008 he took a minor part in The Other Boleyn Girl and was named one of the Shooting Stars at the Berlin International Film Festival. A year later came supporting roles in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and in the Red Riding television trilogy. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times thought Garfield stood out in the latter.

  Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel Never Let Me Go reached the screen in 2010 under director Mark Romanek, with Garfield co-starring opposite Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley. He played Tommy D. and explained his reading of the character this way: "There's a sense of anxiety that runs through these kids, especially Tommy, because he's so sensory and feeling and animalistic, that's my perspective of him." He was drawn to the existential questions the story raises.

  The scenes in which Tommy erupts with a wail of frustration were "intense" for Garfield. "I think those screams are inside all of us, I just got a chance to let mine out", he said. His portrayal of a well-meaning but dim young man caught in a love triangle won the 2010 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. Scott Bowles of USA Today called him "the real find" of the film.

  Jesse Eisenberg was his co-star in The Social Network, also from 2010, a drama about the founders of Facebook. Garfield played Eduardo Saverin. "No one knows who Eduardo Saverin is, and I don't either", he said, adding that playing a living person brought a greater sense of responsibility.

  David Fincher first met Garfield about a different part. Romanek had referred him, and Fincher considered him for Mark Zuckerberg. He concluded that Garfield's "incredible emotional access to his kind of core humanity" suited Saverin better.

  The reception brought BAFTA nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and for Rising Star, plus a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Supporting Role. Mark Kermode of the BBC was surprised that he had been overlooked for an Academy Award nomination, saying "everyone knows he's one of the very best things about The Social Network." Rolling Stone called him "the soul of a film that might otherwise be without one."

  Marc Webb's Spider-Man reboot was next, and it would test him in a very different way.

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• 4. Wearing the Mask

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  Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man, released in 2012, rebooted the film series with Garfield as Spider-Man and Peter Parker and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. Garfield called the casting a "massive challenge in many ways". He wanted to make the character "authentic" and have him "live and breathe in a new way". He said he could relate to Peter, who had influenced him since childhood.

  To prepare, Garfield studied the movements of athletes and of spiders and tried to bring both into his performance. He also practiced yoga and pilates. The film earned $752,216,557 worldwide. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian labelled his portrayal the "definitive Spider-Man", while Tom Charity of CNN praised his "combination of fresh-faced innocence, nervous agitation and wry humor".

  In 2014 Garfield reprised the title role in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He also co-produced and starred in the independent drama 99 Homes that year. He hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, and he appeared in an Arcade Fire music video for the song "We Exist", playing a trans woman.

  Sony and Marvel Studios then agreed a deal to bring Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sequels to the second film were scrapped, and Tom Holland took the role in a reboot.

  Arachnologists Yuri M. Marusik and Alireza Zamani honoured Garfield's portrayal by naming a new species of crevice weaver spider Pritha garfieldi.

  Spider-Man: No Way Home, in 2021, brought him back to the role despite his repeated public denials that he would return. He appeared alongside his successor Tom Holland and his predecessor Tobey Maguire. Garfield called the experience "joyful" and said it gave him "closure" with his version of the character. He added that he would be open to playing Spider-Man again if it felt right.

  In 2023, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse gave him a cameo that also used archive footage.

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• 5. Faith and Conviction

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  Martin Scorsese's Silence, adapted from Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel, cast Garfield as Sebastião Rodrigues. Rodrigues is a Portuguese Jesuit priest who travels to Japan in the seventeenth century to spread his faith. Garfield came to the film after a year away from the screen. He spent a year with James Martin studying to be a Jesuit priest, and he went on a silent retreat in Wales.

  The principal photography was arduous and took place in Taiwan. Garfield lost 40 lb to match the physical toll on his character. Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail disliked the film. She found him "sweetly resolute and gently anguished" but felt he did not illuminate the psychology of certainty or the pain of religious doubt. At the box office, the film earned less than half of its $50 million budget.

  Garfield went on to complete the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. Of that experience he said, "what was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing."

  Mel Gibson's war film Hacksaw Ridge arrived in the same year, 2016, and was a commercial success, earning over $175.3 million worldwide. Garfield played Desmond Doss, a combat medic in World War II. Doss was the first conscientious objector in American history to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

  Brian Truitt of USA Today called the film "brutally intense and elegantly crafted". He credited Garfield with playing Doss with both "simple sweetness" and "steadfast mettle". The performance earned Garfield an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

  His next major challenge came back in the theatre, in a two-part play by Tony Kushner.

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• 6. Broadway and Angels

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  March 2012 brought Garfield's Broadway debut, as Biff Loman in a revival of Death of a Salesman at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. David Rooney of The New York Times wrote that he had "exposed the raw ache of Biff's solitude". The role earned Garfield a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

  From April to August 2017, he played Prior Walter in Tony Kushner's Angels in America at the Lyttelton Theatre in the National Theatre, London. Marianne Elliott directed, and the cast included Nathan Lane, James McArdle, Russell Tovey and Denise Gough. National Theatre Live broadcast the performance to cinemas around the world in the summer of 2017.

  Paul T Davis of The British Theatre Guide called Garfield "transformative and unrecognisable in places", fully inhabiting a Prior who is "camp, laconic, frightened and totally loveable". The performance earned a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor. The same year he also appeared in The Children's Monologues at Carnegie Hall in New York, as a teenager bullied by his father.

  In March 2018, the production moved to the Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway for an eighteen-week limited engagement, with most of the London cast. Peter Marks of The Washington Post wrote that "nothing Garfield's done prepares you for the star-powered dexterity of his Prior". Marks also called the performance the "persuasive moral core of the piece". Garfield won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

  Lin-Manuel Miranda had first seen Garfield perform on stage in Angels in America.

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• 7. Songs and Preachers

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  Breathe was Garfield's only film release of 2017. He played Robin Cavendish, a young man paralysed by polio, and prepared by meeting people who had polio and working closely with Cavendish's wife and son. Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter felt the film glossed over the complexities of Cavendish's life. He thought Garfield was "hampered by a role that restricts him to little more than nodding and grinning".

  Under the Silver Lake premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, directed by David Robert Mitchell. Garfield played Sam, an unemployed and wayward young man searching for a neighbour who has mysteriously disappeared. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair praised him for "doing nimble, subtle bits of physical comedy and teasing out the creepy, menacing side of Sam". Gia Coppola's Mainstream, with Maya Hawke and Jason Schwartzman, had its world premiere at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

  Jessica Chastain starred opposite him in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a drama about the televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. It had its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.

  Tick, Tick... Boom!, Lin-Manuel Miranda's film adaptation, cast Garfield as the composer Jonathan Larson. Garfield had never sung professionally, so he underwent vocal training. The film was released on Netflix. He won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in the musical or comedy category and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

  Dustin Lance Black's miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, in 2022, adapted Jon Krakauer's book of the same name. Garfield played Jeb Pyre, a Mormon detective. Kathryn VanArendonk of Vulture highlighted his "almost flagrantly tender portrayal". The role earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for lead actor in a limited series. That same year, Time magazine put him on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

  John Crowley's romance We Live in Time paired him with Florence Pugh in 2024. In 2025 he starred with Julia Roberts in Luca Guadagnino's thriller After the Hunt. In 2026 came The Magic Faraway Tree, a family film based on Enid Blyton's book series.

  In May 2025 he was cast as Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy in the Apple TV+ miniseries Wild Things. He will reunite with Guadagnino for Artificial, playing OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.

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• 8. Home and Conscience

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  "Agnostic pantheist" is how Garfield has described himself, although he also identifies as Jewish. He holds dual citizenship in the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2009 he told the Sunday Herald that he felt "equally at home" in both countries and enjoyed "a varied cultural existence".

  By 2019 his tone had changed. "I identify more as Jewish than anything... I have a love-hate relationship with both countries and used to be very proud to have both passports. Today, I'm slightly less proud."

  North London, near Hampstead Heath, is his primary home. On a 2021 podcast with Shaun Keaveny, he said he considers England home because his family and friends are there. He is also a fan of basketball.

  Garfield gives interviews about his work but does not publicly discuss the details of his private life. In 2011 he began dating Emma Stone, his co-star in The Amazing Spider-Man, sometime during production. In 2015 the pair were rumoured to have broken up, though no formal statement was released. Asked about his sexuality, he identified as heterosexual but said, "I have an openness to any impulses that may arise within me at any time." Since early 2025 he has been in a relationship with the actress Monica Barbaro.

  His mother, Lynn, died of pancreatic cancer while he was filming The Eyes of Tammy Faye, shortly before Tick, Tick... Boom! began production. He was able to fly home to be with her. In 2021 he spoke about his grief on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He returned to the subject in 2024 in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, and with Elmo in an episode of Sesame Street.

  Garfield has often criticised the capitalist system and consumerism. In 2011 he became the ambassador of sport for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation. In October 2023 he signed an open letter from Artists4Ceasefire to President Joe Biden, calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza war, and he has voiced support for the lives of Palestinians.

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