Garfield spins into Spider-Man action

Andrew Garfield is not the first actor you would think to cast as a superhero.

With his sensitive, soft-spoken and slightly intense energy, it is no accident that his breakout role was playing a geek - Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin - in the 2010 drama The Social Network.

But it turns out that the 30-year-old British-American actor is fully in touch with his brawny side and, in fact, dove headfirst into the physical challenges of reprising his role as the webbed crusader in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

It meant a punishing training regimen and a 4,000-calorie-a-day diet to gain 9kg of muscle after the first film, 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man.

He even excelled when it came to doing his own stunt work, which at times involved standing precariously on the edge of some rather tall buildings.

It all came pretty naturally to him, he tells Life! in an interview at the Sony Picture Studios in Los Angeles.

"I used to be a gymnast, I played a lot of sports growing up and I love dancing and being physical," he says.

In one scene, he had to stand on the edge of a ledge of a building about 80 storeys up - a real test of nerve even with safety cables. One of his stunt doubles could have done it, but the actor did not hesitate to step up himself, says stunt coordinator James Armstrong, who adds that his team "always strives to get the real man doing as much as possible".

And Garfield was "very good" at it, he says, even at the most stomach-churning stunts.

The star made it so easy that director Marc Webb thought he could do it too. Garfield recalls: "He saw me do it and said, 'Oh, that doesn't look too scary', and then he did it and I think his stomach fell out."

The actor, on the other hand, loved every second of the experience. "It was very, very high and very fun."

Rather less fun was the diet and exercise regimen, which Garfield says was noticeably harder on this second film because he was "older by a couple of years and your metabolism starts to slow down".

But his personal trainer, Mr Armando Alarcon, tells reporters: "You have to understand, his metabolism is off the charts. So it has slowed down, but it's still phenomenal."

The trainer adds that Garfield is nothing short of a "finely tuned athlete in all regards" and took to his exercise programme, as well as to the stunt training, like a duck to water.

In addition to more fun exercises such as hiking, surfing and basketball, the pair did a lot of heavy lifting so that Garfield could bulk up for the role - a gruelling routine that began four to five months before he even stepped on the set.

Says Mr Alarcon: "The body that we created for the first movie was 66 to 68kg and the second one was 75 to 77kg. And that was pure muscle that he gained, which is what we wanted because he was a little older in the second film, so we had to make sure the body changed."

He adds that the Spider-Man diet he put Garfield on for the second film involved five meals a day, with an emphasis on organic vegetables, protein and raw foods.

Although the actor would occasionally cheat with forbidden favourites such as pasta and cake, the trainer says he would burn through those and other foods quickly "because he was mostly muscle, around 4 to 5 per cent body fat".

If Garfield is still as buff as he was during filming, it is hard to tell as he chats earnestly to reporters while promoting the film dressed in a baggy checked shirt and casual jacket.

Although there has been speculation about why he has not signed on to do The Amazing Spider-Man 4, which is slated for release in 2018, he insists that he loves the role.

"It's a real privilege for me to play the part, so I want to enjoy it as much as I can," says Garfield, who in previous interviews has expressed the wish to see an actor of another race play the character someday and that he does not see why Spider-Man cannot be gay or bisexual either.

If he does decide to leave the mask and suit behind after completing the third film, due out in 2016, there is no question that the role, the biggest of his career, has already changed his life.

For one thing, it was how he met his current girlfriend and co-star Emma Stone, 25, who plays Peter Parker's love interest Gwen Stacy.

He says of their onscreen romance: "She's a great actress and she brings an authenticity to what she does. I just try and match that and keep up with that."

His next big project will be as one of the leads in next year's Silence, a historical drama about two Jesuit priests travelling through 17th-century Japan.

Helmed by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese, it could not be more different from Spider-Man, but Garfield says this is not part of any deliberate plan to balance out his resume or be taken more seriously as an actor after doing a big-action franchise.

Instead, he chooses roles based on what "my heart and my gut tell me" - a process which he says is still a mystery to him.

"It's what you have an instinctive reaction to, the thing you have no choice but to do. There's always something personal to it - aspects of a character that I need to find in myself or that I need to heal certain parts of myself. It's mysterious, the choices that we make. I don't really know."

This article was published on April 30 in The Straits Times.

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