Andrew Garfield Opens up About the ‘Precise Agony’ Left by Loss of Mother

Andrew Garfield recently earned his second Oscar nomination for his performance in Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s film adaptation of the musical, tick, tick… BOOM!. Garfield portrays Jonathan Larson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who wrote Rent and tragically died at the age of 35 due to an aortic dissection. That shadow of grief added to the urgency of the film, a feeling that Garfield knew intimately due to the death of his mother in 2019 due to cancer. Garfield explained the heartbreak that came with the loss of his mother in an interview with Channel 4, saying “with a loss like that, the world gets rearranged.”

“It is very very difficult, I think with a loss like that the world gets rearranged and I say that knowing I am not unique in that experience,” Garfield said. “It feels just like a precise agony and for a period of time I didn’t want to, and I wasn’t able to, do anything. I was kind of wasted and the world didn’t make sense, and it still doesn’t, because I miss her greatly, and I hope it never makes sense because I always want to miss her.”

According to Garfield, while his mother was proud of his achievements in Hollywood, she was more invested in who he became as a person. “She was proud of my achievements but she was much more proud of how I treated someone in Sainsbury’s or Asda that was checking us out with our groceries, she was someone that was about the small kindnesses in life,” the Spider-Man: No Way Home star said. 

“If I’m short-tempered with someone, if I’m having a rough day and someone walks past me and they’re nice to me and I’m gruff, I will feel a little hand on my shoulder, it will be my mother’s hand and I hear her say ‘Andrew’ and I’ll go back and I’ll say ‘hey sorry that was a bit rude of me,’” Garfield said. “I hope she never takes a hand off my shoulder in that way.”