Andrew Garfield has built quite a career in Hollywood through a stellar slate of films, almost covering all genres. From the high-octane action in Spider-Man: No Way Home to cerebral plots in Hacksaw Ridge and Never Let Me Go, he has made his worth felt. Post his breakout in Boy A, Garfield wasted little time in assuming the position of becoming one of the most highly regarded actors of his generation.
Right from the intense religious drama of Silence to the gripping tech biopic The Social Network, there are some really good performances of his. It has rightly been acknowledged that Garfield’s talent is matched by two Academy Award Best Actor nominations. He deserves credit for his prowess. At this consistency, further nominations are pretty much expected in times to come. Moving further on in his filmography, here are Andrew Garfield’s top seven roles when looking beyond the iconic Spider-Man portrayals.
Never Let Me Go
Andrew Garfield plays the character Tommy D, a clone with contrasting emotions in a rather complicated love relationship between Kathy H, played by Carey Mulligan, and Ruth C, played by Keira Knightley. The film departs to the detailed emotions of the characters under the magnetic attraction to each other when it is nailed in their conscience the reality being organ donators. The chemistry among them, added with their coldness, establishes the depth of the tragedy in the relationships created for the sake of the very melancholic purpose.
Never Let Me Go has received a 7.1 IMDb rating and 71% approval in Rotten Tomatoes. It has been hailed as a powerfully emotional piece in the sci-fi romance genre, dealing with such concepts as love and loss, and the existential terror that attends a fate sealed at birth.
Silence
Most assume Martin Scorsese’s misguided passion project Silence was a case of cashing in on his “blank check” from The Wolf of Wall Street, a laborious and drawn-out picture about the missionaries in feudal Japan. Despite Garfield’s rather dubious accent in the film, most critics seemed to find the film entertaining nonetheless.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a look into the life of Jessica Chastain’s Tammy Faye Bakker, centering on her relationship with Andrew Garfield’s televangelist Jim Bakker. It throws light upon the private and public life of these characters through its detailed portrayal of the graph of the relationship from when the couple first met to the eventual fall of their televangelism empire. Though Chastain won an Academy Award for Tammy Faye, Andrew Garfield’s performance as Jim Bakker was no less worthy. It brought into the light the contrast between what a public figure is and how he or she has been in his personal life, showing two sides of a celebrity’s life.
Hacksaw Ridge
In Hacksaw Ridge, Andrew Garfield plays the combat medic and devout Seventh-day Adventist Christian Desmond Doss. He received his first-ever Oscar nomination for this performance in a highly acclaimed film directed by Mel Gibson, with an approval rating of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.1 rating on IMDB. The performance by Garfield—reserved, poignant—is that of a pacifist thrust into war. Also putting in a strong turn here is Vince Vaughn, sporting an impressive thug drill sergeant impression that rises to the level of R. Lee Ermey.
Doss is an unconventional protagonist of a war movie genre, best known as a conscientious objector. Still, he manages to become an inestimable asset for his unit despite his unwillingness to kill. His heroism is marked not by the lives he takes, but by the countless lives he saves on the battlefield.
Tick, Tick… Boom!
Andrew Garfield’s recent work, particularly with Netflix’s Tick, Tick. Boom!, has only solidified a shift in his acting talent. Directed by the acclaimed Lin-Manuel Miranda, this musical was so far removed from anything done by Garfield previously that it really showcased his range as an adaptive actor. Tick, Tick. Boom! has been hailed as one of the finest film musicals of recent years. If in the future, Garfield decides to take on other such roles, audiences are bound to embrace the performances.
Boy A
It was in 2007 when Andrew Garfield began to find his footing in the industry; he made his mark on the cinematic world for the first time. One of the most powerful portrayals by a living young actor, this young man comes to life in this drama about the efforts of a child murderer to try to work his way back within society upon leaving prison.
It was the internalized pain of a character, torn between his past and redemption, that got audiences and critics alert toward Garfield. The performance of inner turmoil and desperation from the character was so perfectly executed by him.
The Social Network
David Fincher’s The Social Network makes the rather prosaic subject of lawsuit cases into a real page-turner. At the heart of it is Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who is the author of the very popular Facebook. However, it is Andrew Garfield playing the role of co-founder Eduardo Saverin that provides an interesting counterpoint to the character that is Mark Zuckerberg. This story comes to life with powerful, sharp dialogue through Aaron Sorkin’s Academy Award-winning script. This would almost be the making of a supervillain origin story: some disillusioned college student with an iffy website primarily rating how attractive women were that grew into an international connecting device. Given Facebook is not a bit out of the woods with its many scandals of breach of user privacy, if at all, the relevance of the movie has hardly lost a step.
With an IMDb rating of 7.8 and an encouraging 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Social Network would arguably be among the best creations of director David Fincher. The film narrates the story of tech titans surrounded by lawsuits regarding colossal amounts of money, illuminated through a series of simple depositions. Due to all this, Fincher’s brilliant direction, Sorkin’s impeccable script, and the performances put in by the cast—especially of Eisenberg and Garfield—elevate The Social Network to a really involving cinematic experience. The camera work is kinetic, the Oscar-winning editing taut, and the film’s relentless exploration of narcissism brilliantly intimated.
