Andrew Garfield: I consider myself a pantheist, agnostic, occasionally atheist
I didn’t realize it before last week, but Andrew Garfield has not one but two church-baity films out during the Oscar season. The first was Hacksaw Ridge, which was critically acclaimed and considered Mel Gibson’s “comeback” in Hollywood. Garfield played the real-life WWII hero Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who refused to fight or carry a gun during the war, but still saved many lives. The second film is Silence, Martin Scorsese’s passion project about Jesuit priests on a rescue mission in 17th century Japan. Both films have garnered “Oscar buzz” for Andrew in particular, although when everything shakes out, I’m guessing that the films have a better shot at Best Picture nominations rather than Garfield getting recognized for Best Actor. But who knows at this point?
Anyway, Andrew was included in the Hollywood Reporter’s annual “actors roundtable” for some of the Oscar-baity actors of the year. Some of his comments are making news, so I thought… why not cover him? I don’t like covering Garfield because he is such a grumpy bastard, but let’s do this. You can read the full THR roundtable here. These are the Garfield highlights:
Which actress or actor he would choose to be stuck with on a desert island: “Emma Stone. I love Emma. She’s all right. She can come.”
On his faith or lack thereof: “I’m not a Christian person, I consider myself a pantheist, agnostic, occasionally atheist and a little bit Jewish. But mostly confused.”
What he likes about being an actor: “I just like knowing everything I can. I love the fact that I get to train for a year as a Jesuit priest and then train to be a cop and learn how to make a rocking chair. I want to know everything about everything, and that’s not possible and it won’t be possible. I’m not ever going to reach it. Neil Young has a recurring dream where he has the perfect melody — and he wakes up every time and can’t remember it. And that’s what it is for me. There’s something to aspire to always, there’s somewhere further to go. And the thing that I hate about acting is — well, everything I just said. The longing is so f—ing painful sometimes.”
The brutality of working on The Amazing Spider-Man: “[To Dev Patel] I love what you just said, that you were looking at a stranger and feeling like you were perpetuating something that’s toxic and something that’s shallow and something that has no depth, no matter how much depth was attempted. Spider-Man was my favorite superhero, my first superhero costume when I was a 3-year-old at Halloween. I was like, there’s millions of young people watching who are hungry for someone to say, ‘You’re OK. You’re seen very deeply.’ And more often than not the opportunity is not taken, and it is absolutely devastating and heartbreaking because there is so much medicine that could be delivered through those films.”
First of all, I’m not one of those people still hopeful that Emma Stone and Garfield will get back together, but even I aww-ed that comment. It’s nice when exes get along and sing each other’s praises after the breakup. But I really enjoyed his explanation of his faith: “I consider myself a pantheist, agnostic, occasionally atheist and a little bit Jewish. But mostly confused.” That is, hands-down, one of the best answers to a question about religion ever. It’s scary how much I relate to that. As for his grumpiness about Spider-Man… I get it, he was legitimately upset that his Spider-Man wasn’t beloved, and he’s upset that the movies were badly made too, I think. But I hope he understands that part of the problem was that people felt like we really didn’t need a new Spider-Man series? It wasn’t him, it was the timing.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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