Fanfare for the gentle man

IN WE LIVE IN TIME, THE ROMANTIC drama whose slow October rollout has swept up moviegoers in a tidal wave of tears, Andrew Garfield plays a divorced man who finds love in a hopeless place.

- JUDY BERMAN

Recovering in the hospital after a distracted stumble into traffic, Garfield's Tobias meets the apologetic woman who struck him with her vehicle: Almut (Florence Pugh), a talented and fiercely ambitious chef. She becomes the star in their relationship, but he is its tender heart. Tasting her food makes him emotional; he frets about the future and cares for her when she's gravely ill. When she gets pregnant, Tobias takes notes to ensure they're prepared for childbirth.

It's a perfect role for Garfield, a 41-year-old actor who radiates gentleness-and who has spoken with great eloquence about grieving his mother, who died in 2019. That synergy has been reinforced by a giddily received press tour that has fused the actor's personality with his character's, as he offers earnest, sometimes tearful insights about love, death, the power of art to capture both. He explained to Sesame Street's Elmo how missing his mom kept her memory alive. While cuddling puppies in a BuzzFeed video, he riffed on the meaning of life. In a viral clip from the New York Times' Modern Love podcast, he breaks down over a real-life love story.

Garfield's status as the internet's boyfriend du jour was confirmed by the anticipation that preceded his Oct. 18 interview on Amelia Dimoldenberg's YouTube series Chicken Shop Date. And it echoed the fanfare, just a few weeks earlier, that surrounded an actor who occupies a similar niche: Adam Brody, the star of Netflix's hit rom-com series Nobody Wants This. Brody made his sensitiveguy bones two decades ago as the geek-chic Seth Cohen in The O.C.

His latest character is a "hot rabbi" whose vocation imbues him with decency and depth. And if the gentleman is this fall's most thirstily embraced leading-man archetype, he's also popping up elsewhere, from football's Kelce brothers expressing their mutual love to the senior singles in The Golden Bachelorette.