Andrew Garfield unveils the advantage he's found in mourning his mom.
It's not right for others to judge the worth of someone's mourning process, but Garfield's heartfelt and poetic expression of his grief for his late mother, Linda, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2019, offers a sense of connection and potential healing to anyone going through loss.
During an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper for the third season of the podcast "All There Is", Garfield described his mother's most notable qualities as gentleness, kindness, and generosity. Even in her hospice bed, she was more concerned about the care of the nurses than her own pain and discomfort, showing her selfless nature.
In this emotional and moving episode of "All There Is with Anderson Cooper", Andrew Garfield shares how his mother's death has left him with a deep sense of grief, which he believes is the only way for him to feel close to her again. Oct 08, 2024 • 45 min
When the actor spoke about his mother's death on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", his vulnerability resonated with many viewers who were also dealing with loss during the pandemic.
"I hope this grief stays with me, because it’s all the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her, and I told her every day," Garfield said at the time. "She was the best of us."
And the grief has indeed remained with him, nearly five years after his mother's death.
"It’s so weird. It’s like the longing and the grief, fully inhabiting it and feeling it is the only way I can really feel close to her again," Garfield told Cooper.
It was his mother, who Garfield described as creative and sensitive to his teen angst, who first encouraged his pursuit of a career in the arts. When he tried acting, which he jokingly compared to "joining the circus", he found his calling. A multitude of film and television roles, two Oscar nominations, and a superhero franchise followed.
Garfield's latest project, the romantic and weepy "We Live in Time", again confronts the topic of grief. He costars with Florence Pugh as a young couple dealing with a cancer diagnosis.
"There’s a burgeoning awareness of time being short and conditional and therefore every single moment feels very sacred, tiny little moments, big expansive moments. It’s like a meditation on the shortness and sacredness of life and it feels like every scene is a grief scene," Garfield said of the story. "It’s a beautiful film, it was beautiful to inhabit, and it feels meditative, and it feels very wise, and it feels full of rage as well, raging against the dying of the light."
Garfield's light, though somewhat altered, continues to shine as he navigates life without his cherished and British "mum".
"I know for a fact that this is a short life, and the things that mattered before don’t matter anymore. And I think when I say things taste differently, I think things can taste much more sweet now because of the sorrow that I’ve felt, and they can taste much more bitter," Garfield told Cooper. "My feeling towards the world right now, the politics, the culture, where we are as a community, a global community, it can fill me with much more bitterness and sourness and anger and rage. I can feel into my despair a lot more, my hopelessness, and in equal measure, I can feel a far deeper well of hope."
Garfield has found hope - and solace - in his friendships, nature, and the creative path his mother guided him towards.
"The grief and the loss is the only route to the vitality of being alive," Garfield said. "The wound is the only route to the gift."
In the heartfelt episode of "All There Is with Anderson Cooper", Garfield discusses how entertainment projects, like his latest film "We Live in Time", have helped him cope with his grief. The raw and emotional nature of these projects allows him to find solace and express his love for his mother.
Reflecting on his mother's influence, Garfield shares that she first encouraged his passion for the arts, seeing potential in his love for acting, even comparing it to joining a circus. Her support and belief in him paved the way for his successful career in entertainment.
