This is turning into the year of Andrew Garfield. The 38-year-old actor is riding high on the awards circuit, having received raves and nominations for his outstanding turn in the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical, tick tick… BOOM! And he’s receiving redemption in the form of another project that has been long in the making (but won’t be discussed here). Needless to say, Garfield is ticking a number of items off of his career and lifetime Bucket List, which seems fitting because his tick tick… BOOM persona, Jonathan Larson, wrestled with the weight of his accomplishments on the eve of his 30th birthday, and the musical captures all of that uncertainty.
Garfield, himself, didn’t have that level of uncertainty when he turned 30. By that point in his career, he’d already broken into feature films with a part in Mark Romanek’s haunting Never Let Me Go, earned critical raves for his supporting turn in David Fincher’s The Social Network, and played Spider-Man once on screen. Sitting down with CinemaBlend to discuss that time in his life, and his current run in Hollywood, Garfield opened up to us by saying:
Thirty was a moment. I feel like 40 will be more of a moment for me! (Laughs) I’m approaching 40, and I think I need to, if I’m going to have children and a family, I need to do it soon so that I’m not exhausted. But turning 30, yeah, it was a strange thing.
Jonathan Larson, in tick tick… BOOM, was a struggling artist and playwright. He was a waiter at a diner in New York City, and was doing everything in his power not to be that living cliche. Larson, in real life, goes on to write Rent, but dies before the show realizes its full-on Broadway success. This got Garfield reminiscing about his pre-film days, as he goes on to tell CinemaBlend:
I had a period of time in my early 20s where I didn’t know if I was going to make it as an actor. I had a year-and-a-half of waiting tables, working at Starbucks, and doing all of the things that you do. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but obviously, for me, my dream was something different. It was definitely a tricky moment, a tricky time. It took a lot of real soul searching and facing of fear to say, ‘No, I’m going to have to try and spend my time… I’m going to have to stick to it.’ And I’m so glad that I did.
So are we. Just this year, alone, Andrew Garfield has entertained as he has educated, informing us about tele-evangelism in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and bringing Jonathan Larson’s musical contributions to life in tick tick… BOOM. In my opinion, his performance in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical is the best performance of the year (which his performance in that OTHER movie that’s in theaters right now is a close second). Celebrate Garfield today, and watch him burn through the Oscar race as 2022 gets underway.
