10 Essential Andrew Garfield Performances (That Aren’t Spider-Man)

We may need to coin a term for the sheer volume of sweet, handsome British men who suddenly started appearing in every film and series at the start of the 2010s (the New Private School Brit Boy Wave doesn’t quite roll off the tongue). Many of the biggest hitters — Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Redmayne — chased Oscars, joined decade-spanning franchises, or made the occasional bona fide artistic masterpiece. At the dead center of this Venn diagram is Andrew Garfield, who over 15 years has built a career of popular spectacle, mainstream Oscar-tipped fare, and daring projects from directors who are either seasoned pros or ambitious newcomers. What’s more, he just won’t stop being so damn charming every time he’s in the public eye, whether it’s soulful reflections on how roles change his life, confronting the artifice of his public flirtations (while still flirting), or simple, honest memes. But like, so many memes.

Once a Spider-Man, always a Spider-Man, but in the vein of former Brit franchise helmers like Daniel Radcliffe and Robert Pattinson, Garfield has picked his post-blockbuster projects both carefully and counterintuitively. There are the inevitable prestige-courting biopics, but there are also examinations of American religion, beloved auteur passion projects, and two ambitious and galaxy-brained L.A. satires. His projects don’t always generate buzz at their time of release (two of his best films, Silence and Under the Silver Lake, were huge flops on release), but his eagerness to chase the weird, difficult, and surprising points to how ambitious a young actor can get after starring in an underwhelming and bungled superhero series. And hey, if he wants to take part in a victory lap of Spider-Man’s enduring bankability, that’s his prerogative!

The romantic dramedy We Live in Time, out now, feels like a deliberately mundane role in his wide-ranging career; Garfield plays a divorced cereal-brand employee who falls head over heels for a chef (Florence Pugh) and braces the highs and lows of courtship, childbirth, and cancer. To celebrate the variety of characters Garfield played before and after his blockbuster appearances as Peter Parker, here are ten essential roles of his that don’t include slinging webs.

Never Let Me Go (2010)

The same year as his more memorable role in The Social Network (which premiered weeks after Never Let Me Go), Garfield gave a subdued but crushing performance in the Alex Garland–scripted adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s cloning drama. Along with Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley, Garfield plays a human clone raised at boarding school in an alternate 20th-century England. These clones spend their lives in seclusion, sheltered from a fulfilled life, and must eventually offer up their healthy organs to “natural” human patients. The sensitive Tommy D (Garfield) sits at the center of a romantic triangle, where he struggles with a painful, childlike epiphany of his own inadequacies, and Garfield’s soft, nervous demeanor was an impressive calling card that complimented the more booming theatrics of The Social Network. (An interesting connective thread here: Both films’ directors, David Fincher and Mark Romanek, directed music videos before tackling cinema — each of them even collaborated with Madonna. Garfield himself has only appeared in one music video, where he plays a transgender woman in Arcade Fire’s “We Exist.” For multiple reasons, it’s unlikely Garfield would agree to do this today.)

The Social Network (2010)

This wasn’t Garfield’s first big-screen role, but nothing he had done before came close to this film’s scale, scope, and ferocity. Garfield played a fictionalized version of Brazilian Facebook co-founded Eduardo Saverin in David Fincher x Aaron Sorkin’s story of juvenile betrayal at the heart of the social media boom. While Jesse Eisenberg plays Mark Zuckerberg as an acerbic genius who has codified his victim complex into every decision, Garfield taps into the incredulity and exasperation of being punished for not validating every whim of Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurism. He’s slight, baby-faced, but charismatic and handsome; he’s hyperaware of existing in a precarious state between being traditionally successful and an upstart tech disruptor. But when he loses his cool, it’s jaw-dropping stuff — no one has better captured “screaming someone out while trying not to cry” since. 

99 Homes (2014)

In Garfield’s first film after twice playing our friendly neighborhood superhero he faced off against a much murkier evil than anything he had seen in his Spider-Man duology: Florida property tycoons. Ramin Bahrani directed this tense drama about Dennis (Garfield), a laid-off Orlando construction worker whose only chance to escape eviction is to work for Rick (Michael Shannon), the businessman who turfed out his family. With an unshaven face and ill-fitting clothes, Garfield slips into the film’s scummy rat race with expressive, physical ease — it feels like the power that Dennis gets to wield has been rented out to him by Rick’s much sturdier sense of capitalist authority. 99 Homes is one of the more forgotten gems in Garfield’s leading-man career, but first proved he could mix the desperation of the working class with the selfish opportunism of capitalism.

Silence (2016)

A strong contender for the best film of the century, Martin Scorsese picked Garfield to lead his long-gestating passion project about an ill-fated Portuguese Jesuit mission to retrieve their missing mentor after he disappeared in Edo-period Japan. Author Shūsaku Endō feels like a kindred spirit with Scorsese; their Catholicism is integral to their art and self, but also indisputably compromised by their own doubts and context. At the middle of Scorsese’s pained, searching epic sensibilities and Endō’s intimate study of Christian penance and arrogance sits Garfield, who applies Father Rodrigues’ journey of enlightenment and disillusionment with a spiritual dedication that can be both fragile and obstinate — sometimes changing between them in a single line of dialogue. It’s easily Garfield’s strongest performance; he shoulders the insane challenge of the material with a delicate physicality (it often feels like Rodrigues is going to collapse under the weight of his vocation) and a pettiness directed toward both his Japanese imprisoners and his “Kakure Kirishitan” allies who don’t (read: can’t) live up to his saintly standards. Garfield’s frail body feels fused to the vast (Taiwan-shot) landscapes he stands against and the harsh, claustrophobic spaces he’s pushed into; every resistance Rodrigues encounters is eventually internalized, every value he came to Japan with is eventually questioned. Silence is a modern masterpiece of making peace with the unknown — Garfield’s most accomplished performance is for his most demanding role.

Under the Silver Lake (2018)

Reviled when it premiered at Cannes and saddled with a botched A24 release, Under the Silver Lake features Garfield as Sam, a shaggy-haired private dick tracing a trail of ambiguous codes in Los Angeles when a mysterious woman (Riley Keough) vanishes from his apartment complex. Garfield is locked into writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s singular, deliberately off-putting neo-noir vision, playing a slacker detective with tacky shades and a stooped posture who is blind to his own biases as he uncovers the inane cruelty and possessiveness of L.A.’s rich and famous. Garfield’s scrawny frame and precise movements are perfectly suited to Sam the Stoner’s head-scratching odyssey, carting him across sterile swimming pools, joyless costume parties, and airless suburbs, where he makes massive cognitive leaps in conspiracies that may or may not exist. Sam would do well on Stan Twitter.

Mainstream (2021)

The biggest question mark in Andrew Garfield’s career came when Gia Coppola (niece to Sofia, granddaughter to Francis, cousin to Romy Mars) cast him as Link, a charismatic drifter-cum-influencer who, via the YouTube account of struggling young filmmaker Frankie (Maya Hawke), attacks the complacency and narcissism of the Gen-Z crowd in unanchored, inconsistent diatribes. It’s basically a YouTube update to Network, with a new media class capitalizing on the vague, pseudo-provocative ramblings of a deeply unwell and dangerous spokesperson. Mainstream is only occasionally visually appealing, and its deconstruction on the internet content industry is rarely cogent or fresh, but as a disaffected nobody who gets high on his own supply of myopic cultural commentary, Garfield shows little to no inhibitions — his performance frequently veers toward “car crash” territory but always pulls itself back from the edge. The film climaxes with Link on the verge of permanent cancellation, and he responds with a crazy choreographed live streamed dance and a rant that’s indistinguishable from Tim Robinson’s “Coffin Flop,” which may make it the most captivating ten minutes of Garfield’s career.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021)

As the Pentecostal televangelist Jim Bakker — head of the PTL network and husband to the unexpected queer rights champion Tammy Faye — Garfield’s winning, enduring charm is weaponized. Adorned with off-putting (complimentary) prosthetic makeup and smiling in a way that visibly strains his facial muscles, Garfield tips us off to Bakker’s corrupt soul long before the revelations of embezzlement, abuse, and sexual violence alter the trajectory of his life. There’s something so satisfying about watching a sharp, empathetic performer play a phony narcissist. Even though the theatricality of Bakker’s sermons evokes a cheery, prosperous togetherness, the fact that God’s teachings can be channeled and compressed into such a camera-friendly, direct-to-consumer form raises immediate eyebrows about the sanctity of his message. Clearly the most godless Man of God Garfield has played — the one-two of playing a televangelist here and a Mormon cop in Under the Banner of Heaven makes for a religious diptych that’s uniquely American.

tick, tick … BOOM! (2021)

Andrew Garfield has garnered two Lead Actor Oscar nominations, but while there’s nothing technically wrong with his turn as Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor, Hacksaw Ridge is a far less interesting film to champion — even if Garfield is happy to still champion its director. Garfield’s second, more deserved Academy Award nom came for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “rock monologue,” which was expanded into a three-person musical after the Rent composer’s death in 1996. Garfield channels his most powerful (and, therefore, dangerous) theater-kid energy and demonstrates an enviable set of pipes. His Larson is all limbs, all neurosis, beaming with aggressive affection at the sight of urban beauty and crumpling into self-pitying shame when his ruthless career focus is called out. Miranda has worshiped at the altar of Larson his entire career, so Garfield must have faced extremely high expectations from his director; he responded to the challenge with an animated, dynamic, and vulnerable performance that pulls Larson’s non-Rent work into a mainstream spotlight.

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022)

If Andrew Garfield had to be a cop, it makes sense for him to be a devout Mormon one — he’s got that disciplined, straight-laced, healthy-and-holy vibe down. The character he plays, Detective Jeb Pyre, is an invention for the miniseries based on Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book, and his pristine suits and quaffed hair get progressively sullied as he investigates the murder of Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones) by the School of the Prophets fundamentalists. Pyre is the fourth Christian character Garfield has played (although the extent to which Mormons are considered Christians is debated by different churches), so by this point he was experienced in capturing the frustration and powerlessness of a crisis of faith. With his urgent, inquisitive eyes and careful, but increasingly shaky authority, Pyre tries to hold onto the faith he built his life around, and Garfield channels a determination and vulnerability rare for a TV detective. Interestingly, this isn’t Garfield’s first true crime miniseries; in 2009, he played an intrepid young journalist trying to catch the Yorkshire Ripper in the British Red Riding trilogy.

We Live in Time (2024)

Andrew Garfield’s earliest lead role was in a much bleaker film by director John Crowley, Boy A, where he played a young man released from prison after committing a violent crime as a child. But aside from the Garfield connection, We Live in Time is much more in tune with the sweet romance and literary melodrama of Crowley’s Brooklyn and Life After Life — although We Live in Time is the only one to not be adapted from a book. We’ve spent years pushing for superhero actors to utilize their charm in crowd-pleasing rom-coms, and Garfield and Pugh gamely answered our call. Garfield’s aptitude for self-conscious interiority and expertly modifying the tone and intensity of his performance is perfectly suited for the earnest, chaotic and heartrending demands of this modern dramedy. It’s the most Garfield has felt like a stereotypical movie character, the type of broadly defined but emotionally driven everyman that proliferated in the boom of cozy-but-weepy British melodramas over the past 30 years. The fact that Garfield smuggles in this much sensitivity, balancing the severity of how his family must cope under devastating pressure with hilarious, foppish warmth, is a testament to how instinctively and convincingly he adapts to whatever role he lands. The fact that Garfield feels like a tested everyman and a rom-com archetype points to his strength as a performer; it’s not that he changes himself to fit every role, but that his performances all contain an alchemy of his abilities. In every role, there is a mix of theatrical and intimate, of pastiche and realism, of spiritual and the mundane. He’s not just in demand — he apparently won’t take a role unless it demands something from him.