I first became interested in Andrew Garfield and his work not from his starring role in the two big-budget Amazing Spider-Man films (2012, 2014), nor from his famous laptop-smashing scene in David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), but from a conversation between him and Amy Adams from Variety Studio’s Actors on Actors series. His thoughtfulness in engaging with tough questions about commercialism and art led me to seek out the National Theatre proshot of Angels in America, in which he plays Prior Walter. That recording helped sustain me through the first difficult year of the COVID-19 pandemic; I quickly found the rest of his work.

Andrew Garfield was born in Los Angeles in August 1983, though he was raised in Surrey, England, by his Jewish-American father and English mother. After studying at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, he proceeded to perform on both stage and screen with some of the most admired filmmakers and actors of our time, winning him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award and a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for Golden Globe Awards, an Academy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2020 and 2021, he starred in three films: Mainstream, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and tick, tick… Boom!