In 2019, along with 11 of his friends,Andrew Garfield formed a dodgeball teamin London.
They lined up against a small gymnasiums walls all the same.
A whistle was blown.
Players raced toward the center line, Garfield chief among them.
Things kind of happen when Andy is around.
In that February match, the Ball Saints triumphed 2-1 over their opponents.
Look, truthfully, Andy is annoyingly excellent at most things.
Theres this childlike, 8-year-old [quality about Miranda], which is constant.
Garfield is sitting in a fold-up lounge chair in a derelict spot along the East River in Brooklyn.
The sun shines directly into his eyes as he talks, but he declines to move to the shade.
Garfield, whos 38, takes the soul very seriously, his own and those of his characters.
Its part of what drew him to the character of Larson.
He was only about soul, Garfield says.
Around him, friends and co-workers are contracting a fatal virus few people understand.
He was 35 years old.
And thats what I think the ticking was, making sure that he gotRentout before his heart stopped.
BeforeTick, Tick… Boom!,Garfield had never sung professionally.
Are you kidding me?
Youre doing such beautiful work, and I need to check that Im right there with you.
I was like Oh, thats the Andy Ive been hanging out with recently, she says.
Life is sacred; life is a church, he says in a digression about Larsons own spirituality.
Garfield gives the impression of a man voraciously looking for meaning, often in the words of other enlightenment-seekers.
to make it remember who we are, we have to hit rock bottom over and over.
I struggle with that like anyone.
Im just like, Oh, God, I dont want to be humbled over and over.
I dont want to have to die and be resurrected.
That was the best thing to happen to our family, he says.
He realized all the people he loved were still there.
His wife, his kids, his friends, himself.
Its a model Garfield now seeks for himself.
His mother, Lynn, passed away of pancreatic cancer in November 2019 in London.
It was actually a beautiful grief period for me, he says.
I was solo in the city, and I had a really lovely bed.
I was watchingThe West Wing,crying, and FaceTiming with my family back home every day.
I had all this time and space to myself, to say goodbye to my mother.
I became kind of his emotional support animal from afar.
(It also put his filming hiatus in perspective.
Its like, OK, great, so were going to block off this [street].
You wont find his participation splashed across his social media pages.
For one thing, he doesnt have any public ones no Instagram, no Twitter, no TikTok.
For another, he doesnt believe in proselytizing.
One of Garfields main frustrations with his careeris that success has made it difficult to focus on his art.
Taking a job like Spider-Man was a huge undertaking for him, she says.
Garfield has talked about his disappointment around the 2012 and 2014 Spider-Man reboots.
The bright spot of his Spider-Man run wasmeeting Emma Stone, his co-star-turned-amore.
(I dont remember ever being high doing press, no, he says now.)
Hes managed to keep his love life unconfirmed since his separation from Stone around 2015.
You make that connection sacred and it intensifies the joy of it and the specialness of it.
After Spider-Man, Garfield set boundaries.
My right to be ordinary.
My right to be a mess.
My right to be sorrowful.
My right to lose, to get it wrong, to be stupid, to be a person.
We want Instagrams and posts and social media.
Hes never given into that.
So in essence, youll just have to wait and see.)
Do you know what I mean?
Were not enough in the womb, and that is a loathsome state of affairs that were in.
while doing projects that facilitate his introspection.
Who do you want to be?
I dont answer him, assuming hell continue the thought.
Thats not a rhetorical question, he says.
Its, like, a very obvious answer.
