“The custodians of that deep dive”: Andrew Garfield names cinema’s greatest actors
Andrew Garfield might have gotten his break with The Amazing Spider-Man, but in the years since, he’s managed to establish himself as a versatile actor and one of the best British exports.
He’s played everything from the lesser-known co-creator of Facebook, a World War II medic, a man paralysed from the neck down and most recently, a Yale professor accused of sexual assault.
Despite this incredible range of roles and successes, he doesn’t often seem to be considered alongside the other greats of his era. Maybe it’s something to do with the level of humility he presents to the world despite all this, or, in my opinion, it’s down to him not receiving the roles that fully take advantage of his talents in recent years, aside from After The Hunt, which he played incredibly against type.
But, as he makes clear with the long list of actors he still hopes to work with, the 42-going-on-25-year-old shows no signs of slowing down. When posed the question of who he’d like to work with in an interview, Garfield seemed genuinely panicked trying to narrow it down, blaspheming heavily despite his faith, exclaming, “My God. Where do I begin? Jesus Christ”.
When it comes to his peers, he’d love to work with Zendaya again after a brief stint on Spider-Man: No Way Home, and more of his friends, lamenting, “I want to work with my friends. I’ve never worked with Eddie Redmayne or Charlie Cox or Tom Sturridge”. Hopefully, they’ll get some time onscreen together in the future.
There was also Cillian Murphy, with whom he once had a screen test, alongside Ben Whishaw, and he hopes the opportunity will arise with either of the two again. Then there’s the likes of Timothée Chalamet, who he thinks is “just incredible”, and Austin Butler.
However, more than his peers and “the younger generation”, Garfield gushes about the “people that [he] feels are the custodians of that deep dive of acting”, who he’d love to work with. “Older generation actors like Meryl. I’ve been in a film with Meryl, but I’ve never worked with Meryl,” he boasted, before launching into a who’s who of some of the greatest actors of all time, “Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, if he ever decides to work again, Robert Duval, Gene Hackman”.
Sadly for Garfield, some of these older guards have already passed on to the big silver screen in the sky, including the inimitable Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall, but it would be incredible to see him star alongside some of the others on his list. It’s easy to see him and Streep together, given their equally humanising presences on the screen, but something gritty with De Niro or Al Pacino would mix things up a bit for the Spider-Man actor.
He’s lucked out on the Daniel Day-Lewis front, as it seems he’s made somewhat of a comeback after just featuring in his son’s film Anemone, yet who knows when he’ll take up his mantle again. Regardless of which of these names Garfield gets to tick off his list, it’s incredible to be at a level of talent to even think these great actors could even be within your reach.
