Beyond The Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield delicately chooses his character but the actor never shies away from challenging roles. Garfield is a capable actor as his resume shines with accolades including a Tony Award, a BAFTA TV Award, and a Golden Globe win.
The Hacksaw Ridge actor, experiments with his roles across genres. But some movies creep the audience out with remarkably gritty performances that can push people out of the theatre, and that includes his 2020 movie Mainstream.
Andrew Garfield’s Character was Grotesque in Mainstream
Gia Coppola-directed Mainstream has divided critics since its premiere at Venice Film Festival in the UK in 2020. Andrew Garfield played a YouTuber, has been dubbed as his boldest role ever obsessed with fame. As per reports, many walked out of the theatre when it was released in the UK but the craving for the film also remained in many people. As for the critics, they were divided by Garfield’s performance. IndieWire compared the actor’s performance to be “the grotesque lovechild of Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison in The Doors and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker” calling it “one of the most obnoxious ever.” But Variety called it “a messy, childish scrawl of a film.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter Gia Coppola was keen on depicting the experience of the internet. “I guess I just wanted to make it feel like what I would imagine being inside the internet probably feels like,” Coppola said.
“I always just feel like the film kind of tells you what it wants to be, and you make these certain choices that are kind of subconsciously dictated by the tone. I knew I really needed to cleanse myself of this idea and I needed to go kind of full-on into it in order to kind of get out.”
But the film remained grim and it was Garfield’s prowess to pull off his darkest character in Mainstream.
Also read: $709M Andrew Garfield Spider-Man Movie Almost Featured Marvel Villain’s First Live Action Debut
Andrew Garfield on Mainstream
Garfield’s Mainstream character is wild and it was all streamed on screen in the film which includes running naked on Hollywood Boulevard and vomiting on live television in the $5 million movie. “The added bonus was that I did get to work in a way that felt like it didn’t have any consequence somehow,” Garfield said (via Los Angeles Times).
“I could do things that I’ve never done on a film set before, I can do things I’ve never done in my household before, I can do things I’ve never done in private before. So there was something very liberating and attractive about accessing those parts of what it is to be human that we often get encouraged away from very, very early on when we are just wild primordial animal children. So there’s those parts that are long buried that I got to dig up and kind of prance around in.”
The Oscar-nominated actor feels the role was “a personal exercise in freedom, a personal exercise in getting rid of the need to be liked, getting rid of the need to be attractive, getting rid of the need to be heroic or this need to be good.” And the actor revealed that his role, Link in Mainstream was a breakout from the typecast he’d go through in the industry.
Mainstream can be streamed or downloaded on Amazon Video, Vudu, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, and YouTube for a certain fee.
Also read: Marvel Star Nabbed $1.5B Franchise Role as They Thought Andrew Garfield Wasn’t “Handsome Enough”
Source: Independent.
