NYLON - August 2008 - (Page 134) ALPHA MALE After a big-budget beginning in Lions for Lambs, actor Andrew Garfield is settling into a more indie stride. By Nick Duerden. Photographed by Will Sanders It is morning in Los Angeles, and Andrew Garfield, one of the most promising young British actors of the moment, is preparing for another day of glad-handing in a succession of meetings with Hollywood producers. “The whole process is very strange,” he says in the bright living room of the apartment he shares with his actress girlfriend, about whom he’d rather not talk, “if only to maintain my privacy, you know?” He smiles awkwardly, this lean and handsome 24-year-old still in the first flush of fame and trying hard to find his footing. “Some people you meet have heard of you and are interested, others really don’t care. But things are changing. After Lions For Lambs [his first movie] it seems I suddenly have heat. I hate that word. Heat. It’s got nothing to do with talent or artistic integrity, it’s just about being flavor of the month. I’m not comfortable with that concept.” He’ll have to get used to it, though, because this boy has heat in spades. Andrew Garfield was born in California in 1983, but relocated with his family to England three years later. Fiercely competitive—a characteristic he perhaps inherited from his father, who trains the British youth swimming team—he was convinced he never quite measured up to his older sibling, now a doctor. “My brother excelled in everything: head boy, excellent student, very academic,” he says. “My reaction was basically, ‘Fuck you.’ I didn’t become exactly rebellious, but I was naughty— and enjoyed being so.” Though he never really applied himself at school, he did enjoy drama. At the age of 16, he landed a part in the school play, loved it, and later enrolled at drama school. It was to prove a decisive move. “When I got there I was still into things like Michael J. Fox coming-of-age movies, but drama school taught me to become a little more highbrow. I came to realize that acting could be a noble and inspiring thing.” He took an interest in theater and arthouse cinema, now influenced by Dustin Hoffman and Daniel Day-Lewis. Months after graduating, he won a Best Theatre Newcomer award for his performance in Kes, and within three years won two further theater gongs. A casting agent then recommended him to Robert Redford for Lions For Lambs, the political drama starring Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. “I wasn’t quite what Robert was looking for, but I managed to convince him otherwise,” he beams. Following this, he returned to the U.K. and landed what may become a defining role in his still blossoming career. Boy A, which is about to get a cinematic release in the U.S., is a made-for-television drama about a 23-year-old released from prison after his part in the murder of a 10-year-old girl several years previously, now struggling to come to terms with both an enduring guilt and a new identity he must maintain at all costs. Garfield won a BAFTA [the U.K. equivalent of an Emmy] for his performance, and rightly so. He is an understated revelation here, his portrayal full of awkward fragility and regret, and he elicits more viewer sympathy than you’d expect to feel for a murderer. Having recently completed Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus (alongside the late Heath Ledger), it’s little wonder Hollywood now considers him someone with heat. “I’m the product of my parents’ neuroses,” he once said in reference to his own multiple anxieties, adding now that, “I’m sure that if my career does continue to build then so too will those neuroses.” He smiles, but it’s a smile more redolent of confusion than happiness. “I want recognition and appreciation and respect, but at the same time I also consider such goals wretched. I’ve really no idea how I’ll cope if ” Not if, Andrew. When. stylist: nadine sanders. grooming: linda johansson at onemakeup.com using kiehl’s. thanks to alphaville2 studios, london. sweater by siv stoldal, jeans by ksubi. http://onemakeup.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.