It’s been 14 years since the release of The Amazing Spider-Man, and Andrew Garfield’s career is still thriving. However, before he was cast as Peter Parker in his Spider-Man movies, his dream was to play the webslinger. So, after he did it, did he ever think about quitting acting? Well, he got candid about his outlook on his career and life after he played the iconic Marvel hero.
Now, this topic came up because Garfield was asked what his dream was 15 years ago by Variety. At that time, he was in the midst of making his first Spider-Man movie. And it was a childhood dream come true, as the Oscar nominee explained:
I was doing ‘Spider-Man.' That was a dream from 40 years ago, so I was checking off one of my big dreams. I was also checking off just being an actor. I still have dreams, but they’re slightly more earthbound than my previous ones. They’re maybe a bit more philosophical and existential than achievement based. Now I think it’s more I want a certain quality of life. I want a certain quality of relationships with my family and friends. I want a certain quality of relationship with myself.
Andrew Garfield once told us that he’d dreamed of playing Spider-Man since he was 4 years old. So, obviously, being cast as Peter Parker was a very big achievement for him.
The Amazing Spider-Man came around about a decade into Garfield’s career. It was made right on the heels of The Social Network (which he should have gotten an Oscar nomination for), and these movies helped define his early career.
Now, it’s been over a decade since his Spider-Man movies were released, and five years since his cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home. He’s filled those years with other great projects (like Tick, Tick…Boom! and Hacksaw Ridge, for example) that have helped shape him into the actor he is today. But has he ever thought about leaving the craft behind? According to him, he thinks about it often:
All the time. I’ve worked a lot this year. I’ve done like 11 months, 12 months, straight back-to-back projects. I want people to see those projects, so I’m gonna have to tell people about them. I get that. But if I had my druthers, people would just see them, and I could go whittle wood in the Somerset countryside and think about what the birds might be doing.
Well, thinking about doing something and actually doing it are two very different things. While Garfield says he’s thought about stopping, he really isn’t slowing down. In fact, he has three releases on the 2026 movie schedule – The Magic Faraway Tree, which is already out, The Uprising, which premieres on September 11, and Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, which will premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5.
So, his Spider-Man years may be behind him, and his priorities may have changed; however, he’s still acting.
While I expect we’ll continue to see Garfield on our screens for years to come, I do wonder how his outlook on life will impact the projects he picks. He said these days he’s more focused on a “certain quality of life” and his relationship with his friends and family. I love that for him, and I cannot wait to see how it impacts his work.
That’s maybe looking too far into the future, though. If you want to see what Andrew Garfield is up to now, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to watch his work in theaters this fall. If you want to see his dream of playing Spider-Man come true, you can stream The Amazing Spider-Man with a Disney+ subscription.
