Garfield was born in Los Angeles, California.[2] His mother, Lynn (née Hillman),[7] was from Essex, England, and his father, Richard Garfield, is from California.[8][9] Garfield's paternal grandparents were also from the United Kingdom.[10] Garfield's parents moved the family from Los Angeles to the UK when he was three years old and was brought up in Epsom, Surrey.[8][11][12] Garfield's father is Jewish;[13][14][15][16] Garfield had a secular upbringing, and has referred to himself as an "agnostic pantheist",[17][18] though he identifies as Jewish.[19][20][21] His paternal grandparents were from Jewish immigrant families who moved to London from
Poland, Russia and Romania, and the family surname was originally "Garfinkel".[10][22][23]
Garfield's parents ran a small interior design business. His mother is also a teaching assistant at a nursery school, and his father became head coach of the Guildford City Swimming Club.[24][25] He had an older brother who is a doctor.[26] Garfield was a gymnast and a swimmer during his early years, and was also an avid philatelist.[9][24] He had originally intended to study business but became interested in acting at the age of sixteen when a friend convinced him to take Theatre Studies at A-level as they were one pupil short of being able to run the class.[27][28] Garfield attended Priory Preparatory School in Banstead and later City of London Freemen's School in Ashtead, before training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.[5][24][29]
Garfield began taking acting classes in Guildford, Surrey, when he was 9, and appeared in a youth theatre production of Bugsy Malone.[26] He also joined a small youth theatre workshop group in Epsom and took Theatre Studies at A-level[28] before studying for a further 3 years at a UK conservatoire, the Central School of Speech and Drama.[30] Upon graduating in 2004 he began working primarily in stage acting. In 2004 he won a Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Newcomer for his performance in Kes at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre (where he also played Romeo the year after), and won the Outstanding Newcomer Award at the 2006 Evening Standard Theatre Awards.[12] Garfield made his British television debut in 2005 appearing in the Channel 4 teen drama Sugar Rush.[12] In 2007 he garnered public attention when he appeared in the series 3 of the BBC's Doctor Who, in the episodes "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks". Garfield commented that it was "an honour" to be a part of Doctor Who.[31] In October 2007, he was named one of Variety's "10 Actors to Watch".[32] He made his American film debut in November 2007, playing an American university student in the ensemble drama Lions for Lambs, with co-stars Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.[32] "I'm just lucky to be there working on the same project as them, although I don't really expect to be recognised later by audiences," Garfield told Variety in 2007.[32] In his review for The Boston Globe, Wesley Morris considered Garfield's work "a willing punching bag for the movie's jabs and low blows".[33]
In 2010, Garfield co-starred opposite Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley in Mark Romanek's dystopianscience fiction drama Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel of the same name. He said of his character, Tommy D., "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."[40] Garfield was attracted to the film based on the existential questions the story expresses.[40] He said the experience of being a part of Never Let Me Go was "just a dream to come true".[41] He further remarked that the scenes in which his character—unable to contain his frustration—erupts with a wail, were "intense" for him. "I think those screams are inside all of us, I just got a chance to let mine out".[42] For his portrayal of a well-meaning, but dim young man caught in a love triangle, he won the 2010 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor.[43] Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman praised the performances of the lead cast, reflecting that "these three all act with a spooky, haunted innocence that gets under your skin."[44] In comparison to Mulligan and Knightley, Scott Bowles, writing for USA Today, deemed Garfield "the real find" of Never Let Me Go.[45]
The same year, Garfield co-starred opposite Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network, a drama based on the founders of Facebook. On his character, Garfield remarked that "No one knows who Eduardo Saverin is, and I don't either. Of course, the fact he's a real-life human being, breathing on this Earth somewhere, creates a whole new dimension to my approach because you feel a greater sense of responsibility".[46] Initially, the film's director, David Fincher, had met Garfield under the auspices of him playing Mark Zuckerberg, having been referred to him by Mark Romanek.[46] However, Fincher did not like Garfield for the part as he found Garfield's "incredible emotional access to his kind of core humanity" better tailored for the role of Saverin.[46][47] Garfield's performance was very well received; he earned wider recognition and numerous nominations, including BAFTA nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Rising Star, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Supporting Role.[48][49]Mark Kermode of the BBC expressed his surprise that Garfield had been overlooked for an Academy Award nomination, opining that "everyone knows he's one of the very best things about The Social Network."[50] Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern thought the role was portrayed with "great subtlety and rueful charm".[51]Rolling Stone said Garfield delivered "a vulnerability that raises the emotional stakes in a movie", and proclaimed: "Keep your eyes on Garfield — he's shatteringly good, the soul of a film that might otherwise be without one."[52]
Garfield was cast as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, opposite Emma Stone as his love interest Gwen Stacy, in Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), a reboot of the Spider-Man film series.[53][54][55][56] Garfield saw his casting as a "massive challenge in many ways", having to make the character "authentic" and "live and breathe in a new way".[57] He described Peter as someone he could relate to and stated that the character had been an important influence on him since he was a child.[58][59][60][61] For the role, he studied movements of athletes and spiders, and tried to incorporate them,[62][63] and practices yoga and pilates.[64][65]The Amazing Spider-Man earned a worldwide total of $752,216,557,[66] and Garfield's performance was generally well-received.[67][68]The Guardian'sPeter Bradshaw labelled his portrayal as the "definitive Spider-Man" and Tom Charity of CNN commended his "combination of fresh-faced innocence, nervous agitation and wry humor".[69][70][71]
Following a year-long absence from the screen, Garfield had starring roles in two films of 2016, Martin Scorsese's drama Silence and Mel Gibson's war film Hacksaw Ridge. In the former, based on Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel of the same name, Garfield played Sebastião Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit priest in the seventeenth century who travels to Japan to spread his faith.[84] Garfield spent a year with James Martin studying to be a Jesuit priest and went on a silent retreat in Wales. The film's arduous principal photography took place in Taiwan and to achieve his character's physicality, Garfield lost 40 pounds.[85] Kate Taylor of The Globe and Mail disliked the film and wrote that Garfield "is sweetly resolute and gently anguished as the missionary Rodrigues but any hope that the actor might elucidate the psychology of philosophical certitude or the pain of religious doubt proves vain".[86] At the box office, it earned less than half of its $50 million budget.[87][88]Hacksaw Ridge, however, was a commercial success, earning over $175.3 million worldwide.[89] In it, Garfield portrayed Desmond Doss, a combat medic during World War II, who was the first conscientious objector in American history to be awarded the Medal of Honor.[90][91] Writing for USA Today, Brian Truitt labelled the film as "brutally intense and elegantly crafted"; he thought that the central role allowed Garfield to bring depth to his career and praised him for portraying Doss with both "simple sweetness" and "steadfast mettle".[92] He received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Hacksaw Ridge.[93]
Garfield's sole film release of 2017 was the biopic Breathe, in which he portrayed Robin Cavendish, a young man paralysed by polio. In preparation, he interacted with victims of the disease and collaborated closely with Cavendish's wife and son.[98] Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that despite an exceptional story, the film had glossed over the complexities in Cavendish's life, and thought that Garfield was "hampered by a role that restricts him to little more than nodding and grinning".[99] In March 2018, Garfield reprised the role of Prior when the Angels in America production transferred to Broadway for an 18-week limited engagement at the Neil Simon Theatre, alongside a majority of the London cast.[100] Reviewing the production for The Washington Post, Peter Marks commented that "nothing [Garfield's] done prepares you for the star-powered dexterity of his Prior" and considered his performance to be the "persuasive moral core of the piece".[101] He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance.[102]
The 2018 Cannes Film Festival marked the premiere of Garfield's next film, the David Robert Mitchell-directed neo-noir Under the Silver Lake. In it, he played Sam, an unemployed and wayward young man who sets out on a journey to find his neighbour who has mysteriously disappeared.[103] Writing for Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson found Garfield to be "great in the role, doing nimble, subtle bits of physical comedy and teasing out the creepy, menacing side of Sam".[104]
Garfield has dual citizenship in the United States and the United Kingdom.[108] In 2009, he told the Sunday Herald that he "feels equally at home" in both the United States and the United Kingdom and "enjoys having a varied cultural existence".[109] Garfield customarily gives interviews about his work, but does not publicly discuss details of his private life.[110]
In 2011, Garfield began dating his The Amazing Spider-Man co-star Emma Stone sometime during production of the film.[61][111] In 2015, they were rumored to have broken up although no formal statement was released.[112][113] When asked about his sexuality, Garfield identified himself as heterosexual but has said that he has "an openness to any impulses that may arise within me at any time".[114]
In 2011, Garfield became the Ambassador of Sport for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO).[115]
^ abAndrew Garfield in Tales of Ovid, A-level school production, Freeman's School, 2001 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 23 May 2018. Retrieved 4 September 2017.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ abCassandra Szklarski (11 September 2010). "Carey Mulligan couldn't bear anyone else starring in 'Never Let Me Go'". Winnipeg Free Press. The Canadian Press.
^Dalton, Stephen (11 September 2017). "'Breathe': Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
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