Andrew Garfield

Age: 22

Currently: Appearing at the National Theatre in the triple bill of Burn, Chatroom and Citizenship (in rep. to 3 June) and J.T. Rogers’ The Overwhelming (opening on 17 May and booking in rep. to 8 August).

Hometown: Though Garfield speaks with a fully-paid up British accent, he’s actually American. “I was born in Los Angeles and lived there for three years, till my parents moved over to Surrey, when I was three,” he explains. “My dad’s from California, but my mum’s from Essex, so I’ve got an American passport with the right of abode here.” He was brought up in Epsom Downs in Surrey. “I don’t really remember much of my time in America, obviously, though later we used to go on holiday over there when we could afford it,” he says. “But my dad has his accent still, and he brought us up as Americans.” He lives now in Willesden Green in North London, sharing with a couple of friends from drama school.

Discovering Acting: Garfield attended a private school and admits that he didn’t have much sense of purpose there. “I was very bored at school, like a lot of kids are, and I didn’t have much passion or drive for anything. I was very introverted and introspective.” He played a lot of sport and then tried drama class. Initially, he wasn’t too taken by it. “I really just fell into acting, and I wasn’t that excited by that either,” he says. “I didn’t realise how much I loved it until much later on.” It was the encouragement of his drama teacher and the teacher’s wife that made him realise that there was more to it than he thought. “They told me I could do this as a career, maybe, when I was 16,” he says. “It was someone finally saying that this could be my path that made me think, ‘Wow! That’s lovely!’ Of course I started thinking, too, about the other superficial things that come along with being an actor, and that excited me even more when I was that age—the fame and all that.” They convinced him to apply for drama school, and he was accepted to Central School of Speech in Drama in London.

Crisis of Confidence: Drama school wasn’t plain sailing, however. “I had a tough time there,” Garfield recalls. “My first year was great, but the second year wasn’t so great. I lost all my confidence, as a lot of people do in drama school. In the third year, I hit a breaking point and thought, ‘If I don’t get what I want out of this, who knows what the hell I am going to do with my life?’ When an agent signed Garfield after seeing his first play, some of the self-doubt was restored. “Having someone believe in me as a marketable actor boosted me,” he notes. “I took that into auditions, and I had two jobs lined up just before I left drama school.” His first gig was in a new play called Mercy at Soho Theatre. “It was like a dream. Until then, I was so scared, I thought I was not going to get anything.”

Leading Man: The day after Mercy ended, Garfield went straight to his next job: starring in a stage version of the iconic film Kes at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. “I didn’t watch the movie before I did it,” he says, “I wanted to so much—I had my finger next to play button all the way through rehearsals—but I told myself I couldn’t!”

Wherefore Art Thou: Garfield returned to the Royal Exchange a year later to play another iconic part, Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, last September. “That was really, really tough, to take on that role at such a young age,” the actor proclaims. “I was just 21, and it was exhausting, physically and emotionally.” His Juliet was Gugu Mbatha-Raw, “a beautiful, beautiful girl and it’s really lucky that we got on,” and they got the reviews to prove it that they were a hit. The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner wrote, “Love here is a dangerous thing and on occasion not even very pretty: it is giddy, hot-headed, sweaty, and sometimes even snotty. Garfield's

Babou Ceesay & Andrew Garfield in The Overwhelming

Romeo can certainly throw a teenage tantrum, and when he guns for Tybalt after the death of Mercutio it is with ugly rage and passion. His