{"id":6542,"date":"2025-01-02T01:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T01:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?p=6542"},"modified":"2025-01-02T01:51:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T01:51:00","slug":"andrew-garfield-needed-recalibrate-reassess-refill-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newssoccer.uk\/?p=6542","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Garfield: “I needed to recalibrate, reassess and refill my own cup”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Garfield chats exclusively to\u00a0RadioTimes.com<\/span>\u00a0about his role in We Live in Time and why he needed to take a short career break.<\/p>\n

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Andrew Garfield is on what you might call a restorative journey. When we meet on a balmy afternoon, the Hollywood actor is attending the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Yesterday, he was on the red carpet posing with Bollywood star Shraddha Kapoor, whom he\u2019d just met at the festival, and he seems overwhelmed by this historical Middle Eastern city. \u201cIt\u2019s a very magical place,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were having dinner under the stars last night on a rooftop in the old town. I feel very welcomed here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly before that, Garfield was in North Africa, serving on the jury of the Marrakesh International Film Festival in Morocco. \u201cI was watching two films every day with these amazing filmmakers as part of the jury,\u201d he explains. Among them,\u00a0Challengers\u00a0director Luca Guadagnino, who served as jury president; Ali Abbasi, the Iranian filmmaker behind recent Donald Trump film\u00a0The Apprentice; and India\u2019s Zoya Akhtar. \u201cThat was really inspiring, and a reminder of how many stories there are to be told.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Garfield, 41, is back himself with a story to tell, the heartbreaking romantic drama\u00a0We Live in Time. He plays Tobias, a divorcee who falls for a chef, Almut, played by Florence Pugh. \u201cIt\u2019s a story about loss,\u201d says Garfield, \u201cIt\u2019s a story about the cost of loving someone and the courage to move towards a life of fullness and meaning, even if it\u2019s a simple life, and it\u2019s a very beautiful love story between two very simple, ordinary people. It feels like a very universal love story for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film comes directed by John Crowley, who previously collaborated with Garfield on Boy A, the harrowing 2007 drama that saw the actor claim a television BAFTA for his role as a troubled youngster sent to prison for a violent crime. The two projects couldn\u2019t be more different; Boy A is stark and jarring; We Live in Time is warm and heartfelt. Ever since it received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it\u2019s been gaining fans in love with its frank honesty.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think what really attracted me about Tobias is that he doesn\u2019t start with his emotions on his sleeve,\u201d says Garfield. \u201c[He] thinks that if he\u2019s just a good boy, and he doesn\u2019t feel too much, and if he just kind of gets on with things, keeps his head down, he will be rewarded in some way. But then [Almut] crashes into him literally, and his world explodes, his consciousness explodes, as does his heart, to the point where he\u2019s watching her crack eggs and he\u2019s overwhelmed by a sense of falling in love.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Of course, true love rarely runs smoothly as We Live in Time shows. While it comes with a fractured narrative that doesn\u2019t reveal its secrets easily, in its midst is a terrific turn from Florence Pugh, the British actress seen in everything from\u00a0Dune: Part Two\u00a0to\u00a0Oppenheimer. \u201cFlorence is such a natural talent, such a naturally gifted actor, that you wind her up and you let her go,\u201d says Garfield. \u201cAnd I\u2019m so lucky that she is that way, because I love nothing more than working with an actor that I can really tune into; it makes the job so much more pleasurable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Florence Pugh as Almut and Andrew Garfield as Tobias in We Live in Time.\u00a0A24<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Is We Live in Time a reaction to a dearth of romantic dramas in cinemas these days?<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Garfield says, after a thoughtful pause. \u201cI am not sure. I think maybe retrospectively, but that definitely wasn\u2019t part of my thinking going in. But I think it makes sense that right now, there is a lack of love in cinema. There\u2019s a lack of love in culture in lots of ways, particularly. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the same over here, but in western culture, there\u2019s a lack of heartfelt sincerity and real connection. I think there\u2019s a lot of division and a lot of disconnection obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He takes a breath, his mind on a roll now. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to find that [disconnection] and lots of anger and rage and sometimes righteous and other times not. So I do feel like maybe… because we\u2019ve had a great success with the film in America and other territories, which was very pleasantly surprising, and I do think it probably speaks to what you\u2019re talking about, which is a kind of universal, eternal yearning for connection, for love, for the reminder of the beauty of being alive and our interconnectedness.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Born in Los Angeles \u2013 his father hailed from California, his mother from Essex \u2013 Garfield is that intriguing mix of American optimism and British reserve. Brought over to England when he was three, he grew up in Surrey, where he gravitated towards acting, eventually enrolling at London\u2019s Central School of Speech and Drama. After graduating in 2004, it wasn\u2019t long before he was gracing the stage for the National and batting Daleks in a couple of\u00a0Doctor Who\u00a0episodes.<\/p>\n

His major breakthrough came in 2007 when he starred as a disillusioned student in Robert Redford\u2019s Lions for Lambs. Since then, he\u2019s evolved into a genuine heavyweight. But in a career that\u2019s seen him play a Jesuit priest (Silence), Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (The Social Network) and a conscientious objector (Hacksaw Ridge), Garfield has rarely been cast in romances. Was it something he was looking for? \u201cI wasn\u2019t looking for anything,\u201d he shrugs. \u201cI was looking to sit down and look out a window. And I did. I found that for a year or so.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The last time Garfield was on screen, it was as his iteration of Peter Parker and his superhero alter-ego in 2021\u2019s\u00a0Spider-Man: No Way Home, the highly entertaining romp that brought Garfield back to the role he played twice before, alongside other Spidey actors Tobey Maguire and current web-slinger Tom Holland. \u201cI wasn\u2019t against working,\u201d he continues, \u201cbut I was definitely not in a huge rush to get back to work after Angels in America, tick, tick… BOOM!, the Spider-Man film, Under the Banner of Heaven. And losing my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Garfield\u2019s mother Lynn died in 2019 of pancreatic cancer, back when the actor was filming evangelist biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye. It came in the midst of an intense run of work that began with his Tony-winning performance on Broadway in the 2017-18 production of Tony Kushner\u2019s seminal AIDS drama Angels in America and continued into musical tick, tick… BOOM! and TV drama Under the Banner of Heaven, which gained Garfield an Emmy nomination for his detective investigating a murder in the Mormon community.<\/p>\n

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Is it any wonder all he wanted to do was stare out of a window? \u201cEverything felt like it was changing, and I wanted to be present for that change,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think I was exhausted in a way that was energy well spent, but I definitely felt like I needed to recalibrate, reassess and refill my own cup so that I could re-engage with work in a revitalised way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Florence<\/picture><\/div>\n
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Florence Pugh as Almut and Andrew Garfield as Tobias in We Live in Time.\u00a0A24<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Garfield received the script for We Live in Time, it was enough to stir him from his period of reflection. \u201cIt came along, and it felt as easy when I read it as… ‘Oh, yeah, I can imagine just stepping into the next room and sculpting this with some people.’ It felt quite soothing, actually. A lovely healing kind of process.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Did the experience give him a renewed energy for acting? \u201cYou know what? It\u2019s funny. As soon as I got on set, my energy was renewed. I was, \u2018Oh, yeah, I love this. I love this so much.\u2019 I think the time off has given me a renewed energy for storytelling and for acting. Just waiting. Sometimes you have to just do nothing and trust that the energy will come back rather than force it. I don\u2019t like to goose myself into anything. I feel like it\u2019s kind of antithetical to a true creativity. And I\u2019m lucky enough where I get to live like that. So I\u2019m feeling much more inspired.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Garfield recently completed work on the campus-set thriller After the Hunt, opposite Julia Roberts. It\u2019s directed by his fellow Marrakech juror Guadagnino, the director who previously shot Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet to fame in Call Me by Your Name. \u201cHe\u2019s someone who just loves to create from his own soul, and he\u2019s not concerned with anything else,\u201d says Garfield of the filmmaker. \u201cHe\u2019s so prolific. So I find that very inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n

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While Garfield isn\u2019t averse to the superhero universe that has so filled cinemas these past two decades, it\u2019s clear he wants to continue seeking out auteur directors. He cites his friend Brady Corbet, whose \u201cmasterpiece\u201d The Brutalist is a major awards contender this year. \u201cI think ultimately, I\u2019m looking to make things that feel very personal, but that can take on any shape or size, any medium. I\u2019m not as concerned about the way or the how, I\u2019m concerned about the feeling. I watched something like Brady\u2019s work, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s the feeling.\u2019 No matter the outcome, that\u2019s the feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Garfield chats exclusively to\u00a0RadioTimes.com\u00a0about his role in We Live in Time and why he needed to take a short career break. Andrew Garfield is on what you might call a restorative journey. When we meet on a balmy afternoon, the Hollywood actor is attending the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Yesterday, 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