ANDREW GARFIELD'S ANSWERED PRAYERS

How the erstwhile superhero— and perpetual seeker—fashioned himself into one of Hollywood’s finest actors on his own soulful terms.

- SAM SCHUBE

It ’s not that playing Spider-Man wasn’t fun, Andrew Garfield says. No, playing Spider-Man—which he did in two films, preceded in his red-and-blue spandex by Tobey Maguire and followed by Tom Holland—was great. It was all the stuff that came along with being Spidey that he couldn’t stand.

Before he even agreed to star in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, he worried about this—about the way the job seemed certain to transform him into a public figure and upend his life. But he said yes anyway, and then watched with mounting panic as the role basically consumed his life.

Garfield was shooting his second SpiderMan film, in 2013, when he realized he had reached a breaking point. It felt excessive— the money, the fame, the attention. They were filming in New York City, Spidey’s ancestral home. Garfield and his co-star, Emma Stone, were dating at the time and had become a tier-one paparazzi magnet. He felt an urgent need to get his feet planted firmly on the ground.