Garfield’s sensitive soul

Andrew Garfield is a very unlikely superhero, said Kevin Maher in GQ (U.K.). As a sensitive, “skinny kid” growing up in London, the star of The Amazing Spider-Man was a magnet for bullies. The teasing and beatings started in elementary school, says the 28-year-old actor, and continued until “I was 17 or 18 and in drama school, and there’d be three or four of them and they’d take my wallet. I’d come home feeling so disempowered and angry.” Garfield enrolled in drama school because acting was the only thing for which he had a talent—or so his teachers said. In a family of high achievers, he often wondered, “Am I going to be the waster?” But in 2008 Garfield won a BAFTA—the British film industry’s highest accolade—for his portrayal of a child killer in the movie Boy A. He found the attention he received utterly unnerving. “The whole [award ceremony] was so shocking and scary,” he says. “By the time I got home I started to have a panic attack. It was the result of pure adrenaline falloff, and the realization that although the success of the night had felt really nice, it was never going to satisfy me.”

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