Biography
Andrew was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of a British mother from Essex and an American father from California. His family moved to England three years after he was born. Garfield is Jewish and was raised in a “middle class home”. Garfield’s parents ran a small interior design business; his father later worked as a swimming teacher and his mother as a teaching assistant at a nursery school. He was raised in Surrey, England and attended the City of London Freemen’s School in Ashtead before training at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Garfield started taking acting classes in Guildford when he was fifteen, and appeared in a youth theater production of Bugsy Malone. He also joined a small youth theater workshop group in Epsom, and began working primarily as a stage actor. In 2004, he won a MEN Theatre Award for his performance in Kes at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre (where he also played Romeo the year after), and won the outstanding newcomer award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2006.
In October 2007, he was named one of Variety’s “10 Actors to Watch”. At the Berlinale 2008 (Berlin International Film Festival) he was one of the shooting stars. In November 2007, he featured in the ensemble drama “Lions for Lambs”, playing an American university student, as well as the Channel 4 drama “Boy A”, for which he won the BAFTA for Best Actor in 2008. He appeared in the film “The Other Boleyn Girl”. In 2009, he appeared in the Terry Gilliam film “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” and the “Red Riding” trilogy.
He appears in the forthcoming British sci-fi thriller “Never Let Me Go” and is filming “The Social Network”, alongside Brenda Song, Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg. The film, about the founders of Facebook, is based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”. Garfield made a modeling debut and appeared in a Vogue December 2009 issue alongside Lily Cole as Hansel in the photographed retelling of Hansel and Gretel.
Garfield has been chosen to play Spider-Man in Marc Webb’s 2012 Spider-Man reboot.
THE BASICS
Birthday: August 20, 1983
Birthpace: Los Angeles, California, USA
Hometown: Surrey, England
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Back Roads (2012)
