Andrew Garfield was nominated for his first Emmy award this year. Vanity Fair reported that the award for best actor in a limited-series is slated to be a close race, with Michael Keaton, Colin Firth and Jared Leto also having stand-out performances. Garfield was nominated for his role of Detective Jeb Pyre in the Hulu series “Under the Banner of Heaven.”
This is not Garfield’s first religious role — he’s had a handful of others. The “Spider-Man: No Way Home” actor has described himself as a spiritual person and explained how that has impacted his acting.
What has Andrew Garfield said about his own spirituality?
In 2016, Garfield told The Hollywood Reporter, “I’m not a Christian person. I consider myself pantheist, agnostic, occasionally atheist, and a little bit Jewish, but mostly confused.”
While filming the 2016 movie “Silence,” in which he took on the role of a Jesuit priest, Garfield said that he developed a friendship with Jesuit priest Father James Martin. After finishing filming, Garfield told Jesuit publication America magazine that he found beauty in the Ignatian Exercises, a Catholic practice often done on religious retreats. He told the reporter, “What was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing.”
Garfield doesn’t identify as a Christian. In an interview with Collider, he described his spirituality.
“And that’s what spirituality is for me, I think,” he said. “It’s a kind of awareness of the finite nature of being here. And making sense and meaning out of it while we are here. And where do the main world religions get it right? Where do they go astray?”
When speaking with Collider, he also indicated that he is most interested in characters who are defined by their faith or defined by their loss of it. Religion Unplugged described Garfield’s approach to these characters, “He’s a better and more diverse actor than a lot of categorically Christian actors are. That’s because he approaches faith, and life as a whole, with a sincere and generous curiosity.”