2021 was a busy year for Andrew Garfield, and not just because he reprised his version of Spider-Man alongside Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire’s Web-Slingers in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Garfield also starred alongside Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye and played Rent creator Jonathan Larson in Netflix’s Tick, Tick… Boom!. While Garfield can currently be seen playing Detective Jeb Pyre in the miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven (which is accessible with a Hulu subscription), he’s revealed that he’s going to be taking a break from acting, and for a good reason.
Rather than keep up this work pace going for the foreseeable future, Andrew Garfield informed Variety that he’s stepping away from acting because he needs to “rest for a little bit.” He elaborated:
I need to recalibrate and reconsider what I want to do next and who I want to be and just be a bit of a person for awhile. Because as you know, that is a washing machine, that awards season. I need to just be a bit ordinary for a while.
It’s understandable why Andrew Garfield feels the need to press the pause button on acting. The man’s kept busy with making three movies and one miniseries over the last several years, and with his return as the Amazing Spider-Man universe’s Peter Parker being such a big deal, both The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Tick, Tick… Boom! received a lot of attention during this past awards season. The man is entitled to take a step back from the performing world for a while to catch his breath and, as he put it, spend some time as an “ordinary” person. As such, after Under the Banner of Heaven wraps up, who knows when we’ll see him back on screen performing a role?
Andrew Garfield isn’t the only Spider-Man actor who’s taking a break from acting, with Tom Holland saying in February that he’ll take a breather after he’s done shooting the Apple TV+ anthology series The Crowded Room. Fellow superhero actor Ryan Reynolds also said last November he’d be taking a break from acting, although with movies like If, Deadpool 3 and the Clue reboot on the horizon for him, I’m skeptical about if he’ll be able to stick to that. Jennifer Lawrence also stepped away from acting after finishing her tenure as Mystique in Dark Phoenix and returned for Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up.
I assume that many people reading about Andrew Garfield stepping away from acting are wondering what this means for a hypothetical The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Fans have been campaigning for Garfield to get another solo outing as the Webbed Wonder, (to the point that Sony has poked fun at their efforts), and in January, Garfield said he’d be open to playing Peter Parker again. However, the following month, Garfield also said there are “no plans” for him to reprise the role, and it’s not like The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is officially on Sony Pictures’ slate. So even assuming the studio is interested in a threequel, with Garfield on his break, it’ll be a long time before the project can make any significant progress moving forward.
If you’re interested in seeing Andrew Garfield’s work on Under the Banner of Heaven, new episodes drop Tuesdays on Hulu. It’s hard to say when we’ll see Garfield back on our screens performing once that miniseries is done, but whenever his next project is announced, even if it’s years down the road, CinemaBlend will let you know.
