By: Izumi Hasegawa September 19, 2015
Andrew Garfield, a.k.a. Spider-Man, plays a single father in 99 Homes. How did he prepare for that and where did he find inspiration? And what is his ideal age for having kids? Yes, he answered your questions!
Q: You play a father in this film, how did you prepare for this role? What is your inspiration and what is your ideal age for having kids?
I kind of thought, “I can’t do this. I can’t do that. I don’t know what that means because I’ve never done it.” And then I realized, “Oh, that’s how all men feel when they have kids.” So I felt prepared in my ill-preparedness. Then I think because, you know, look at him (Noah Lomax, his onscreen son), he looks like my older brother at this point, that was a part of kind of what we talked about, that feeling that sometimes I am going to feel like a dad, sometimes you are going to feel like a son, sometimes I’m going to feel like a big brother that doesn’t want a little brother around, sometimes I’m going to feel like the son that needs a strong man and sometimes I need him to be the strong man. The same goes over here, this kind of weird family dynamic, weird in a good way, in a strangely functional way where everyone is fulfilling different roles at different times. It just felt like a family that I hadn’t really seen on film before, so that was exciting. I don’t know if there is an ideal age to be a father. I don’t know.
Q: 58?
Fifty-eight, yes, actually, yes, 58. That’s right [laughs].
Q: This story is kind of about survival. What do you need to do to survive in this world today? What do you betray in order to survive?
F***k. I betray myself every day to survive. I betray myself in small ways, big ways, in order to fit in, in order to be accepted, in order to stay on a path I think I’m supposed to be on. So yeah, I feel afraid a lot as well. In the world, in the modern world, I feel a lot of fear about a lot of instability to be honest. I don’t feel a great foundation in our culture, as of now. There are great things happening and there’s soulful things happening, but usually on the outskirts, and it takes a great deal of treasure hunting to find those things and find something that deep and meaningful. And yeah, what these guys have said, so grateful and lucky, and thank God for story telling, and thank God for this medium of story telling, because without this I would be lost. This is a big part of survival for me in that I get to give myself to something that feels meaningful. That’s why when a story like this comes along, it’s really impossible to say no because it’s very rare, the essence of what this story is. Yeah, it’s my very shallow answer to a very difficult question.
99 Homes opens in theaters on September 25th.
