Talk of acting often focuses on “process”: How do the best of the best create their performances? “I think it’s mostly instinctive,” says Andrew Garfield. “I like the idea of fate and destiny, that we can’t live into our destiny until we accept our fate. That’s the job of the actor, actually: self-revelation. It’s kind of like deep-sea traveling, but in the human psyche and the soul in order to provide illumination for all of us.”
Garfield, recently nominated for his second best actor Oscar for his performance as musical theater composer Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick…Boom!, speaks as passionately about nearly everything as he does about acting. Larson, who died at age 35 from an aortic aneurysm, was also an eternal dreamer whose convictions were infectious. Garfield had no previous singing experience but trained for a year to belt out Larson’s compositions; his exuberant performance is imbued with the triumph and agony of the music and the man.
An Academy Award nominee and Tony winner at age 38, Garfield has found a level of success Larson did not live long enough to see. But if his movie career ended tomorrow? “If I could survive doing theater for the rest of my life, in a small theater, just exploring plays and connecting with audiences and other theater artists, I know that I would be happy.”
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