Wide audiences are about to discover this fall what Boy A and Red Riding Trilogy watchers have already discovered: Andrew Garfield is an immensely talented actor. Playing in two of the most high-profile films of the fall, Never Let Me Go and The Social Network, Garfield should be set for notoriety. But those two films are hardly the end of the line. As we learned back in July, Garfield has been cast as the next Peter Parker in Sony's Spider-Man reboot, the role of a lifetime. Since the announcement, Garfield hasn't been available for comment, but now that he's promoting Never Let Me Go at the Telluride Film Festival, the press have full access to him and that means speaking out on Spidey.
THR caught up with the future web-slinger at the festival and, in addition to talking about his soon-to-be-released projects, they asked him how he is preparing for the notable role. His response is hardly surprising:
I have been waiting for this phone call for 24 years, for someone to call me up and say, "Hey, we want you to pretend to be a character that you’ve always wanted to be all your life, and we’re going to do it with cool cameras and cool effects and you’re going to feel like you’re swinging through New York City. Do you want to do that?" [laughs] “Let me just consult with my seven-year old self and see what he thinks...” So my seven-year-old self started screaming in my soul and saying, This is what we’ve been waiting for. Like every young boy who feels stronger on the inside than they look on the outside, any skinny boy basically who wishes their muscles matched their sense of injustice, God, it’s just the stuff that dreams are made of, for sure. It’s a true fucking honor to be part of this symbol that I actually think is a very important symbol and it’s meant a great deal to me, and it continues to mean something to people. So yeah, I feel like I’ve been preparing for it for a while. Ever since Halloween when I was four years old and I wore my first Spider-Man costume.
Shooting for the film begins in December, but the actor has already begun preparing for the role, particularly in his flexibility. With the project still three months away, he has also taken on another film, though he said that he couldn't comment on it.
Is there anyone amongst us who wouldn't kill for this kind of opportunity? Even non-comic fans must dream about what it would be like to play such a larger-than-life character. You have to imagine that any actor who auditioned for the role would have felt the same way in the run-up to filming. It's still a mystery as to why Sony decided it would be the best move to simply reboot the franchise, but at least Garfield appears to have the enthusiasm for it.
