Andrew Garfield was a big fan of Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films, but by the early 2010s, well past his twenties, he didn't think he would ever have the chance to play the web-slinger. He certainly didn't expect Sony to audition him for the role after they canceled Maguire's planned fourth installment.
"At the first audition, I thought that was it; I was too old. I felt like I was too old. I was 25 or 26 years old, and I was playing a high school student. I know I have good equipment and all that, but I don’t know. [I felt that because of that] I wasn’t going to get it. I was already surprised that I had the opportunity to do a test audition," Garfield recalled on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. He became increasingly excited as he got closer to the role, but he tried to heed the advice of his acting teacher, Greta Seacat.
"Greta guided me as an actor: 'You need to treat this audition like you're making a short film with your high school friends,'" said the actor, whose Seacat's advice helped him not to mess up the audition due to feeling too much pressure. He repeated mantras to himself like, "Be free. It doesn't matter. Act like it doesn’t matter at all. That’s how you can draw out any talent within you. You’re a kid again. You're sensitive, but you’re not anxious about everything being perfect. I remember feeling like I told myself, 'I don’t give a f***.'"
With this attitude, Garfield left the audition feeling good, and he is still grateful to Seacat for preparing him, as he ultimately got the role of Peter Parker. In 2012, at the age of 29, he starred in The Amazing Spider-Man, which grossed $758.7 million worldwide, far from being a failure. However, it was unfortunate that it was released shortly after the first Avengers film, which achieved much greater success, and Marvel fans were more focused on the growing cinematic universe.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which arrived two years later, earned a more modest $708.9 million, and in the meantime, the MCU needed a Peter Parker, so Sony "returned" the superhero, recasting the role. This forced Garfield to hand the baton to Tom Holland. However, he returned in Spider-Man: No Way Home and recently reiterated that he would love to play Spider-Man again if approached with the right story.
