Andrew Garfield has opened up about working with the late Hollywood icon Robert Redford, revealing that he was always late to set.
The British actor, 43, worked with Redford on 2007 war drama Lions for Lambs, which follows a US senator (Tom Cruise), a reporter (Meryl Streep) and a university professor (Redford) while American soldiers are sent into Afghanistan.
It marked Garfield’s film debut, with the Spider-Man star playing student Todd Hayes. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ’s Redford, who died in his sleep last year aged 89, also directed the project.
Speaking about his experience working alongside Redford, Garfield said in the latest episode of Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast: “He was a beautiful, beautiful man and very late all the time to everything. I say it with love.”
He added that he was “terrified and nervous and pinching myself” on the set of Lions for Lambs, “and then Bob is four hours late”.
“By that time, I’m just pissed. I’m just angry,” he said, jokingly. “No, I wasn’t really. But a lot of the nerves had dissipated because he was so loose and causal and so cool. He still dressed like he was in his twenties with the double denim.
“He wasn’t aware that he was late. He was just on his own Redford time. He was famously late. I’m not telling tales out of school. He was a famously late person.”
Poehler then joked: “But God is fair. He’s so handsome – there’s got to be something wrong with him.”
Despite Garfield being new to film, Redford would often ask him what he thought of his takes, the actor also revealed.
“He would shoot himself, and then he would look at me after his first take, and he’d be like, ‘What do you think?’ And I was like, ‘It’s great. Really good, Robert Redford.’
“He made me feel like it was my set and made me feel like I was an equal and like he knew it was my first movie. He was so nice. He was so beautiful.”
Redford rose to fame in the Sixties and Seventies and became the blueprint for Hollywood leading men with his rugged American style, blonde hair and charismatic charm.
He starred as Wild West outlaw Robert LeRoy Parker in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, winning a Bafta for Best Actor for his performance, and took on roles in The Way We Were (1973), All the President’s Men (1976) and Indecent Proposal (1993).
Redford took home an Oscar in 1981 for directing drama Ordinary People and later received an honorary award from the Academy in 2002. He retired in 2018 and died just last year, surrounded by his family.
After Lions for Lambs, Garfield went on to play the titular superhero in three Spider-Man films and roles in The Social Network (2010), The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021), Hacksaw Ridge (2016) and Tick, Tick... Boom! (2021) – with the latter two earning him Oscar nominations for Best Actor.
He’s now starring in Luca Guadagnino’s biographical comedy drama Artificial as controversial OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, with the film being released by indie distributor Neon after Amazon dropped it earlier this year. It came shortly after Amazon announced a new partnership with OpenAI, which included a $50bn investment in the AI company and the development of customised AI models.
