Andrew Garfield is sharing why grief continues to shape some of his most powerful performances.
Over seven years after the Oscar nominee’s mother Lynn Garfield died from pancreatic cancer, he gave insight into how his work impacts his own bereavement journey, including his latest role in the period drama The Uprising, in which he plays a grieving farmer who leads a revolution.
“This is an incredible vehicle to be able to express the thing that binds us all together,” Garfield exclusively told E! News about the Paul Greengrass film, in theaters Sept. 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 continued, “so it all just amalgamated and felt like a full rich meal to dive into.”
And as the 43-year-old has continued to be open about his own grief in the years since his mother’s death, he expressed that he wants people who may also be experiencing loss to understand that they’re not alone.
“It’s their grief that binds them to their community, that everyone knows grief,” Garfield shared of what he hopes people navigating loss take away from The Uprising. “It’s part of living, and that we find each other in our grief. We find each other in our woundedness.”
As the Amazing Spider-Man star emphasized, mourning “is a necessary thing.”
“We need each other,” he added. “We’re pack animals, as far as I can see.”
For Garfield, the “sadness” of missing someone who is gone is a “gift.”
“It’s kind of a lovely thing to feel, in a way,” he told Elmo during a 2024 appearance on Sesame Street, “because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them.”
Despite the tragic death of his mom, Garfield—who also previously explored the theme of grief through his work in 2024’s We Live in Time—has embraced a beautiful outlook on feeling deep emotions or sadness.
“This is all the unexpressed love, the grief that will remain with us until we pass,” he shared, while getting choked up during a viral appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2024, “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 added. “And I told her every day. We all told her every day she was the best of us.”
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