Andrew Garfield shares the gift he discovered while grieving his mother

CNN
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Andrew Garfield deals with his grief generously.

Not that one's own grieving process should be valued by others, but Garfield's ability to so lovingly and poetically express his grief for his mother Linda, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2019, offers a gift of connection and perhaps catharsis to anyone experiencing loss .

“My mother's most obvious qualities were gentleness, kindness and generosity,” CNN's Garfield told Anderson Cooper in a thoughtful discussion for the third season of the podcast “All There Is.” “On her hospice bed, she was more concerned about the nurses than her own pain and discomfort. She was that kind of person.”

All There Is with Anderson Cooper Andrew Garfield's Grief

Andrew Garfield's mother Lynne died of pancreatic cancer in 2019. In this deeply moving and emotional episode, Andrew speaks to Anderson about how grief is now the only way he can feel connected to his mother again. “The wound is the only route to the gift,” says Andrew. “Grief and loss are the only path to the vitality of life.”

Oct 8, 2024 • 45 min

When the actor spoke about his mother's death during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in 2021, which has since been viewed more than two million times on YouTube, his vulnerability seemed to touch the hearts of many during the pandemic itself were grieving relatives.

“I hope that this sadness stays with me because it's all the unspoken love that I couldn't tell her and I told her that every day,” Garfield said at the time. “She was the best of us.”

As he hoped, grief continued to accompany him in the nearly five years since his mother's death.

“It's so strange. “It's like the longing and the sadness of completely internalizing her and feeling that this is the only way I can feel really close to her again,” Garfield told Cooper.

It was his mother, who described Garfield as creative and sensitive to his teenage angst, who first encouraged him to pursue a career in art. When he tried acting, which Garfield jokingly compared to “joining the circus,” he felt he had found his place. Dozens of film and television roles, two Oscar nominations and a superhero franchise followed.

Garfield's latest project, the tearful and romantic “We Live in Time,” returns to the theme of grief. In the film, alongside Florence Pugh, he plays a young couple living with a cancer diagnosis.

“There is a growing awareness that time is short and conditional and therefore every single moment feels very sacred, tiny little moments, big, far-reaching moments. “It’s like a meditation on the brevity and sacredness of life and it feels like every scene is a scene of mourning,” Garfield said of the story. “It's a beautiful film, it was beautiful to live in, and it feels meditative, and it feels very wise, and it also feels full of anger, angry against the dying of the light.”

Garfield's light still burns as it changes as he juggles life without his beloved and British “mother.”

“I know for sure that this is a short life and the things that mattered before no longer matter. And I think when I say things taste different, I think things can taste a lot sweeter now because of the grief that I've felt, and they can taste a lot more bitter,” Garfield told Cooper. “The way I feel about the world right now, the politics, the culture, where we are as a community, as a global community, can fill me with a lot more bitterness and resentment and anger and anger. I can feel my desperation, my hopelessness much more acutely, and at the same time feel a much deeper source of hope.”

Garfield has found hope – and support – through his friendships, in nature, and in the creative work his mother guided him to do.

“Grief and loss are the only path to vitality,” Garfield said. “The wound is the only way to the gift.”