Andrew Garfield is coming off the high of two of the biggest films of his career: tick, tick…BOOM! and Spider-Man: No Way Home. For the former, the British actor earned the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
While discussing the film with Jimmy Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Garfield expressed his happiness at the film’s ability to resonate with a younger audience. He compared the struggles young artists are facing today to his character’s slow rise in the theatre industry.
Young people especially are responding to it, kind of strongly I think, because it feels like the kind of quintessential portrait of [like] a young artist struggling and having to go through rejection and failure, which we all have to go through at a young age when we’re training or when we’re studying, or when we’re trying to make it in whatever business we’re in. And I think it’s giving a lot of hope to a lot of young people who feel a vocation, who feel a calling to a specific image or dream of their life.
tick, tick… BOOM! follows the life of Jonathan Larson, portrayed by Garfield, and is based on the stage musical of the same name that Larson penned prior to the magnum opus he will be forever known for, Rent. The film was written by Steven Levenson and directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and has been hailed as one of the best films of 2021. Rounding out the cast are Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, and Judith Light.
As proud as Garfield inevitably is of his work in the film, he isn’t confident that he’s going to win an Oscar for it. We’ll find out for sure when the 94th Annual Academy Awards air on Sunday, March 27, on ABC.
