ET Canada sat down with a bearded Andrew Garfield during TIFF to discuss the star’s transformation into an everyday man for his new film 99 Homes.
The actor stopped by our Nespresso Festival Central Lounge and spoke passionately about the emotional project. “All I knew was that I needed to do it,” he told our Sangita Patel.
99 Homes sees Garfield play a man who loses his home in the 2008 American foreclosure crisis. To prepare for the role, Garfield lived alongside real-life displaced families and camped out in a hotel for two weeks. “They want to talk about it,” he said of the people he met. “They do want to understand by conversing, and that’s the only way we get to the bottom of something…going into the deepest form of that conversation.”
But it’s Garfield’s physical transformation that’s been one of the most talked-about items during his time at TIFF, he tells Patel. The 31-year-old is barely recognizable with a new beard, which is much longer than the scruff he sports in 99 Homes. “Whoever I meet or whoever I sit with they go, ‘okay we gotta talk about the elephant in the room.’ And I’m like, ‘what? What’s going on?’,” Garfield explained. “It’s nice to stroke and it’s a little blanket for my face.”
Andrew Garfield attends the “99 Homes”; premiere during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images