Andrew Garfield got his "craving for spirituality" from his late mother.
Andrew Garfield on set
Lynn Garfield sadly passed away aged 69 following a battle with cancer in late 2019, just before the 38-year-old actor started filming Lin-Manuel Miranda's big-screen adaptation of Jonathan Larson's 'Tick, Tick... Boom!'.
And the 'Amazing Spider-Man' star has revealed he got to "honour" his late parent in "every frame" of the upcoming musical movie, as an unexplainable "strange, magical" thing made the movie about his mom as well as late musical maestro Jonathan.
Speaking on 'The Jess Cagle' podcast, Andrew explained: "I've always had that craving for spirituality in my own life and my mum was that way, too.
"She was a pantheist, I guess if she was to have a name. She could find God in nature and all things and God meaning love, God meaning connection, God meaning, meaning and mystery, and a kind of cosmic oneness. She didn't believe in a man with a beard in the sky, she believed in kindness really - kindness was her God.
And it's funny, this project, funnily enough, didn't feel like much of a spiritual project to me this felt like a project of hubris and tragedy and human frailty, whereas 'Tick, Tick... Boom!' felt like a deeply spiritual project. And that's where I got to really honour my mother in every frame like there was a strange, magical thing that happened where suddenly, this was about her, it was about Jonathan Larson and Lynn Garfield. And so she's in every frame of 'Tick, Tick... Boom!', it's a really odd thing and it's hard to explain but 'Tick, Tick... Boom!' is for me about so many things but mostly about ... not mostly, but in this moment, It feels about an awareness of the shortness and the sacredness of our lives, all of us ..."
The 'Hacksaw Ridge' star added how losing a parent is "totally different" from losing anyone else.
He continued: "We're all leaving with an unfinished song and that was evident when my mom passed, and I've lost people in the past I've lost friends and mentors and grandparents, but there's something different. For anyone who knows, when you lose the person that brought you into the world, there's something totally different that happens when that person leaves this world, whether they're 102 or 69, as my mum was, there's an inevitability and you kind of go, oh wow, we're all leaving with an unfinished song no matter how long we live for, and all the grief that comes up is all the unexpressed love and you realise that love is endless and unconditioned and unconditional because of the grief that you feel."
And Andrew is grateful to Miranda for "taking a risk on him" without knowing if he could sing, as he hailed the film "a communal experience" for the audience.
He said: "So I got to attempt to carry on singing Jonathan Larson's unfinished songs, as well as my mother's unfinished song through this story of 'Tick, Tick... Boom!'.
"And it was one of the great creative soul experiences I ever hope to have in my life, and I'm eternally grateful for Lin-Manuel Miranda for taking a risk on me, not even knowing if I could hold a tune.
"So it's a very, very beautiful thing that I'm excited for people to get to experience and share because it does feel like a communal experience that film."
Tagged in Andrew Garfield Lin-Manuel Miranda