Andrew Garfield is reflecting on the lasting influence of his late mother, Lynn, seven years after her death, saying he tries to carry her “compassion and care” with him in his own life.
In a new Esquire UK cover story, the British-American actor opened up about the lasting impact of his mother, Lynn, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2019.
“I hope I have my mother’s capacity for empathy and compassion and care and nurturing and love,” said Garfield, who stars in this year’s The Magic Faraway Tree and the upcoming The Uprising.
“She was a very purely unconditionally loving person, wanting to help everybody all the time — anyone she could get her hands on, anyone that came into her orbit,” recalled the Oscar nominee.
He noted, “It was a very beautiful and exhausting quality for her. She was never pushy, but she could read people, and she could feel who needed a little extra kiss.”
“I’m very aware of my dad in me: of his and my ambition, competitiveness, but also a kind of tenderness,” he said, before adding, “He’s very decent, staunchly ethical. He has a real moral rectitude.”
The Amazing Spider-Man star added, “I also know I have the capacity for anger that he has. I labelled anger as a negative emotion for a long time, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s boundary-setting. So I’m down with anger.”
He went viral in 2021 after opening up on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert about losing his mother, saying he hoped the grief would stay with him because it represented the love he never got to express.
Garfield fronts the Paul Greengrass-directed historical drama The Uprising, which explores the rebellion against King Richard II and arrives in theaters September 11.
He’ll next play OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the Luca Guadagnino-directed biopic Artificial.
