‘Breathe’ Star Andrew Garfield on Finding Hope in ‘a Place of Near Apocalypse’

This story about Andrew Garfield first appeared in the Actors/Directors/Screenwriters issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.


Robin Cavendish couldn’t use his body. Couldn’t caress his wife or pick up his son, couldn’t scratch his nose or shoo a fly. He had some control of his facial muscles but no control of his breathing, which was regulated by a machine. And none of those things struck Andrew Garfield, who plays Cavendish in the Andy Serkis movie “Breathe,” as any kind of acting challenge.

“I only thought of it as a life challenge,” said Garfield, who co-stars with Claire Foy in the decades-spanning biopic of the man who became a pioneering advocate for the disabled after being paralyzed by polio.