Andrew Garfield Shares Emotional Lesson From Processing His Grief in His Movies.
Andrew Garfield explains why some of his most potent performances are still influenced by sadness. The Oscar nominee discussed how his work affects his personal grief process, especially his most recent performance in the historical film The Uprising, in which he plays a heartbroken farmer who spearheads a revolt, more than seven years after his mother Lynn Garfield passed away from pancreatic cancer.
“This is an incredible vehicle to be able to express the thing that binds us all together,” Garfield exclusively spoke with news organizations about the Paul Greengrass movie, which opens in theaters on September 11. "Which is pain, a woundedness, a grief, on the other side of that, a longing for a more just world, a world that makes more sense to our souls.”
“We're all feeling like we want to create a better world together right now in the times we're in,” he added, “so it all just amalgamated and felt like a full rich meal to dive into.”
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In the years since his mother's passing, the 43-year-old has remained candid about his own pain and stated that he wants anybody who might be grieving to know they're not alone.
“It’s their grief that binds them to their community, that everyone knows grief,” Garfield discussed the lessons he wants anyone dealing with loss to learn from The Uprising. “It’s part of living, and that we find each other in our grief. We find each other in our woundedness.”
The Amazing Spider-Man actor stressed that grieving "is a necessary thing."
“We need each other,” he went on. “We're pack animals, as far as I can see.”
Garfield views the "sadness" of losing a loved one as a "gift."
"It's kind of a lovely thing to feel, in a way,” when he appeared on Sesame Street in 2024, he informed Elmo, “because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them."
Garfield, who earlier examined the issue of mourning with his performance in 2024's We Live in Time, has adopted a lovely perspective on experiencing intense emotions or melancholy despite the untimely death of his mother.
“This is all the unexpressed love, the grief that will remain with us until we pass,” during a popular interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2024, he broke down in tears. "Because we never get enough time with each other, no matter if someone lives until 60, 15, or 99.”
“I hope this grief stays with me because it's all the unexpressed love that I didn't get to tell her,” he went on to say. “And I told her every day. We all told her every day she was the best of us."
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