Andrew Garfield‘s work in new indie drama “99 Homes” has led him to question Hollywood’s celebrity culture, and all of the responsibilities that come with it — like promoting his own movies in interviews.
“Why the fuck am I doing this?” the former “Amazing Spider-Man” star asked a Vulture reporter. “Coming in today to do interviews, I’m like, Why?” he said. “I know that I’m an actor and it’s part of the job, and I feel lucky I get to do that, but with the interviews, it’s such a weird thing. What do I have to say?”
Working on “99 Homes,” directed by Ramin Bahrani and costarring Michael Shannon, made him see the unfairness of capitalism in the United States, and he is upset that as an actor, he is not doing more to help improve society.
“It’s so heavy even talking about it,” said Garfield. “Hearing you talk, I just suddenly feel like my head is wrapped in cellophane. How do we wake up, how do I wake up, what do I do? Because I can stand here and be like, ‘We need to fucking do shit,’ I can say that. But if I’m not doing anything, what the fuck am I really doing?”
In fact, Garfield is “deeply offended by our culture as it stands,” and criticizes Hollywood’s standards that don’t make him fit in.
“We’re only accepted if we are … well, name it,” Garfield told New York Magazine on Thursday. “White … Handsome, charming, charismatic, thin-enough eyebrows to be beautiful, but thick enough to be still be masculine. We are told constantly we’re not enough, we’re told constantly that we don’t have enough, we’re told constantly that we’ll never be enough.”
The actor added that, despite the enormous opportunity presented by being cast as the lead in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” he is still “fucked up in his own ways.”
“[I’m] insecure, and scared, and don’t really know who I am,” he continued. “Celebrity is the new religion, as far as I can see, along with money, power, status. It’s all the same umbrella — the seductive forces of evil, really.”
Garfield also talked about the sudden rise to fame that accompanied being cast as Spider-Man and the negatives associated with it.
“It was a character that I wanted to play my whole life and not one part of me was indifferent,” said Garfield. “But I got incredibly uncomfortable with the attention that just came with that job. It was nothing to do with me, it was to do with this idea of celebrity.”
Garfield has two movies coming up in 2016: “Hacksaw Ridge,” costarring Teresa Palmer, Vince Vaughn, Luke Bracey and Sam Worthington; and “Silence,” starring Liam Neeson and Adam Driver.