Andrew Garfield has barely been away from the headlines during the last few weeks, and in news that must make the actor so happy, he’s currently been a hot topic of conversation for reasons entirely unrelated to the never-ending discourse surrounding his presumed involvement in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Instead, social media has been fawning over Garfield’s incredible performance in Netflix musical Tick, Tick… Boom!, which has placed him firmly in the Best Actor conversation. Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature-length directorial debut on the project tracing the all-too-brief life and times of Jonathan Larson, with the star and filmmaker clearly hitting it off.
Speaking to Collider about the movie, Garfield admitted that Miranda had made a long-held dream of his come true, with the 38 year-old having long harbored ambitions to appear in a musical.
“The way I’d put it is… Lin made a dream of mine come true that I didn’t even know I had. You know what I’m saying? Like I think it’s been a dream of mine to be in a musical… but I didn’t own it. I was too scared of it potentially happening… and failing. So, you know, sometimes it takes someone else to see where you can get to, clearer than yourself. Lin is that – Lin is this magical creature that awakens parts of you… just by being in his orbit, that make you realise or find out aspects of yourself that you didn’t even know existed.
Because he is so full of his own self-belief, his own artistic freedom and creativity – you see him free styling and you’re like how are you able to reach that level of total free-play and brilliance? – there’s a self-belief there that I think is contagious. So, for me it was like, I will trust in this genius of musical theater, even if I don’t feel confident in myself, I will borrow his confidence in me.”
Garfield’s turn in Tick, Tick… Boom! is all the more impressive when you consider that he’d never even sang in public before, but he spent months in rigorous training in order to ensure he could do Larson justice. An Academy Award nomination is a virtual certainty at this stage, and he may even be a dark horse candidate to go home with the trophy itself.