Citizen Andrew
Profile of young actor Andrew Garfield
by Jed Medina

“I was very bored at school, like a lot of kids are, and I didn’t have much passion or drive for anything. I was very introverted and introspective. I really just fell into acting, and I wasn’t that excited by that either. I didn’t realize how much I loved it until much later on,” admits Andrew Garfield.

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The 23-year-old actor made the successful transition from British theatre to Hollywood films via Robert Redford’s upcoming Lions for Lambs. The film is a gripping drama featuring three pairs of characters - a political science professor (Redford) struggling to connect with a disillusioned student (Garfield), a senator (Cruise) trying to market a new military strategy to a journalist (Streep), and two friends who went to Afghanistan to fight the war.

In the film, Garfield plays the disillusioned student Todd Hayes and had to do some research for the part. “I saw the fraternity life head-on, and it was fascinating and disgusting at the same time.” He admitted that his own aspirations weren’t always particularly cerebral. “Until three years ago, I wanted to be Michael J. Fox and make Back to the Future 4.” Lions and Lambs, however, was a sobering project which he welcomed. “Thank God there is a big studio movie that goes where no one else has really touched yet,” he said in an interview.

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Apart from Redford’s film, Andrew has also just finished John Crowley's Boy A. Based on Jonathan Trigell’s novel, Boy A tells the story of a nine-year-old who commits a gruesome murder and gets dubbed by politicians and newspapers as ''The Evilest Boy in Britain.'' Fifteen years later, Boy A , now known as ‘Jack’, wins release from prison and discovers the opposite sex while still tormented by violent urges and the fear that his past will be discovered.

Perhaps surprisingly, Garfield found the latter the more intimidating experience.

"It was very emotionally draining but I love that," he says. "I'm curious about the extent to which you can push your emotions as an actor."

Citizen Andrew

Enjoying the best of both worlds, Garfield was born in the US but grew up in England.

“I was born in Los Angeles and lived there for three years, till my parents moved over to Surrey when I was three,” he explains. “My dad’s from California, but my mum’s from Essex, so I’ve got an American passport with the right of abode here.” He was brought up in Epsom Downs in Surrey. “I don’t really remember much of my time in America, obviously, though later we used to go on holiday over there when we could afford it,” he says. “But my dad has his accent still, and he brought us up as Americans,” reports Mark Shenton in an interview with the young actor.

Theatre-trained, Hollywood-bound

It is his performance in three plays - Beautiful Thing, Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship and The Overwhelming, for which he won the Evening Standard newcomers award late in 2006 - that set people talking about Andrew Garfield as the best young actor now working on the stage.

“I love working on such different characters. I find it really interesting and feel so lucky that I’ve been given the opportunity to explore these people who are quite far away from me. I’m not gay, I’m not working class, and I’m not 15!” says the young actor.

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One critic even described Garfield in the play Beautiful Thing as having ‘all the poise of a young Ben Whishaw - raw, delicate and powerful”.

It now appears that both thespians have followed almost identical timelines. After rave reviews in theatre, both have been cast in high-profile roles, Whishaw in I’m Not There and Brideshead Revisited, while the younger Garfield appeares in Lions for Lambs, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

Great Expectations?

An increasing number of young British actors are winning high-profile leading and supporting roles in film opposite some of the industry’s most famous names. Among them, are Eddie Redmayne, Sam Riley, Felicity Jones, Hayley Atwell and now Andrew Garfield.

“It’s been amazing, absolutely amazing!” Garfield says of his career to date.

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Profile of Andrew Garfield written by Jed Medina for the Movie-Fanatic. With excerpts from interview conducted by Mark Shenton and from various press materials available on the internet.

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