The exact moment Andrew Garfield knew he wanted to be an actor: “So stirring in my soul”

Posted On September 28, 2025September 28, 2025

Andrew Garfield is deceptively the cherubic face of a teenager with a birthday sporting 1983, which means he’s comfortably into his 40s.

His movie debut came in the 2007 drama Boy A, in which he plays a young man recently released from a young offenders’ prison. You can even spot him in an episode of Doctor Who, fighting Daleks in New York City alongside David Tennant for the ‘NuWho’ reboot.

With the fountain of youth on his side, Garfield was able to land roles that other actors his age were disbarred from on sight. When The Amazing Spider-Man hit theatres, he was nearly 30 years old and convincingly playing anxious teenage Peter Parker. Since then, his stock has risen and his CV stacked in variation. He’s been a World War II soldier in Hacksaw Ridge, a struggling musical theatre writer in Tick, Tick… Boom!, and an amateur detective in the highly polarising Under the Silver Lake. He did all of this while looking like he was barely old enough to shave. 

As much fun as it’s been to poke fun at the guy’s baby face, we have to acknowledge how talented he is too. Garfield is a great actor, just as capable of breaking people’s hearts as he is making them laugh. He was always destined for a career in Hollywood; however, as he explained to Awards Daily, it actually wasn’t a movie that led to his life on the big screen.

“It was when I saw my first play that I thought it was something I wanted to do,” he recalled, “It was Mnemonic by Teatro Complicité. It’s an avant-garde piece, Simon McBurney’s theatre company. The live aspect made think they were real and there was something so profound about this play and so stirring in my soul, I wanted to give people that experience to be provoked and to be reminded of something eternal.”

Simon McBurney is an English actor with an extensive collection of film roles; everything from The Manchurian Candidate to Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. In 1983, he founded Théâtre de Complicité, a theatre company focusing on experimental and movement-based productions. They have put on a number of highly acclaimed plays over the years and worked with stars the calibre of Al Pacino and Steve Buscemi, but Mnemonic remains one of their most popular original pieces.

The play is helmed by the character of Simon, a self-aware director serves the audience a guide through the surreal journey ahead. Two stories play out on stage: one about a man trying to track down his missing girlfriend; the other about the discovery of a 5,000-year-old corpse frozen in ice, and Simon, who quickly takes on many forms, invites viewers to examine how memory plays a part in each of the stories and how trustworthy our own minds really are.

Much like any avant-garde art form, Mnemonic isn’t for everyone. However, if it does connect with you, it will do so in a way that nothing else can. Just ask Andrew Garfield.

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