Throughout his career, Andrew Garfield has starred in some terrific movies, ranging from action-packed comic book blockbusters like Spider-Man: No Way Home to sobering, socially conscious dramas like Hacksaw Ridge and Never Let Me Go. Since making his critically lauded feature film debut in Boy A, Garfield has quickly become one of the most celebrated actors of his generation. Garfield has received such prestigious accolades as a Tony Award, a BAFTA, and a Golden Globe, and he’s been nominated for two Oscars, both for Best Actor. In 2022, Time included Garfield on their list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Garfield has worked with such acclaimed movie directors as Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Robert Redford, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. He’s played a wide range of characters, from a conscientious objector forced to fight in World War II to a clone who learns his days are numbered to a teenager bitten by a radioactive spider. With the odd exception, like Mainstream and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Garfield’s films have been widely praised by critics and audiences alike. But some of his movies, like the harrowing religious drama Silence and the gripping tech biopic The Social Network, stand head and shoulders above the rest. Here is a ranking of Andrew Garfield's best movies.
6 Never Let Me Go
Adapted from the Japanese novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go would work well enough as a heartbreaking coming-of-age love triangle story. But there’s a haunting dystopian sci-fi twist as the characters learn they’re clones who will have their organs harvested in early adulthood. Andrew Garfield stars as Tommy D, a clone caught in a complex romantic entanglement with Kathy H, played by Carey Mulligan, and Ruth C, played by Keira Knightley. The three actors share magnificent chemistry as they deal with complicated emotions that are ultimately meaningless in the melancholic context that they were bred as organ storage facilities.
With a 7.1 rating on IMDb and a 71% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes, Never Let Me Go was promptly embraced as a moving addition to the sci-fi romance canon. Ishiguro’s book was adapted for the screen by Ex Machina filmmaker Alex Garland, who is one of Hollywood’s go-to writers for character-driven science fiction. Like its source material, the movie deals with lofty existential themes such as the importance of love and human connection, what it means to have a soul, and confronting the inevitability of mortality. Not everybody is destined to have their organs harvested, but everybody is destined to “complete.”
5 Tick, Tick... Boom!
In Tick, Tick... Boom!, Andrew Garfield plays musical theater legend Jonathan Larson in a cross between biopic and musical. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is an ode to creativity, a musical about making a musical. With a 7.5 rating on IMDb and an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes, it celebrates creative endeavors and explores the struggle to make a living as an artist. The musical numbers are expertly intercut with Larson’s devastating personal stories that inspired them. As Larson reckons with the temptation to give up his dreams in favor of a steady yet soul-crushing career, he’s given simple but powerful advice for artists facing constant rejection: “Write the next one.”
4 Spider-Man: No Way Home
Ever since he debuted in the role in 2012, Andrew Garfield has been consistently spot-on in his portrayal of Peter Parker. But The Amazing Spider-Man movies' uncharacteristically dark tone and overstuffed plotting, with unnecessary backstory and far too many villains, let down Garfield’s pitch-perfect performance as Spidey. When he was brought back via a Doctor Strange spell gone wrong in Spider-Man: No Way Home, he was finally given a Spidey story worthy of his talents. With an 8.2 score on IMDb and a 93% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Spider-Man: No Way Home is one of the most acclaimed entries in the MCU.
Spider-Man: No Way Home united all three live-action versions of Spider-Man for a multiversal team-up. It’s an ambitious crossover experiment with an emotionally engaging story. Tom Holland’s Spidey threequel is a Capra-esque parable carrying the message that everybody deserves a second chance – even the Green Goblin. Garfield’s scene-stealing supporting turn is one of the greatest performances in the MCU. He brings raw emotion to every scene, like his monologue about the dark turn he took after Gwen Stacy’s death. In the scene in which Garfield’s Spidey achieves redemption when he saves MJ from a near-identical deadly drop, he conveys so much validation and catharsis with a single look.
3 Hacksaw Ridge
Andrew Garfield earned his first Oscar nomination playing combat medic and Seventh-day Adventist Christian Desmond Doss in Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge. The movie has an 8.1 rating on IMDb with an approval score of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. While Garfield anchors the movie with a nuanced, heart-wrenching performance as a pacifist at war, he’s backed up with a great supporting turn by Vince Vaughn as a gruff R. Lee Ermey-style drill sergeant. Doss is a unique war movie protagonist because he’s a conscientious objector. He refuses to fight but still proves to be an indispensable member of his unit. Doss becomes a war hero by saving lives, not taking them.
2 Silence
Although Martin Scorsese is renowned for his gangster films, some of his most highly praised movies are about religion. Kundun is a biopic of the 14th Dalai Lama, and The Last Temptation of Christ is a controversially bloody biopic of Jesus. Between The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman, two of his most beloved crime epics, Scorsese helmed one of his most underrated movies: the religious-themed Silence. Andrew Garfield stars as Jesuit priest Sebastião Rodrigues, based on the real-life Giuseppe Chiara, who travels to Japan to locate his missing mentor. A passion project of Scorsese’s, Silence earned a 7.1 rating on IMDb and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 83%.
With stunning Oscar-nominated cinematography and almost documentary-like realism in its depiction of elongated executions, Silence is a chilling portrayal of historical religious persecution. Garfield shares terrific chemistry with Adam Driver as a pair of priests whose faith is tested by cruelty and inhumanity. In spite of its lengthy runtime of 161 minutes, Silence commands the audience’s attention with striking imagery and immersive recreation of 17th-century Japan. This under-seen Scorsese movie bombed at the box office with a total gross of $23 million (via Box Office Mojo), but it’s destined to be reappraised and find a second life as a cult classic.
1 The Social Network
David Fincher managed to make litigation captivating in The Social Network. Jesse Eisenberg takes the lead role as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, but Andrew Garfield provides a captivating foil as his closest business rival, co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Brought to life with the razor-sharp dialogue of Aaron Sorkin’s Academy Award-winning script, The Social Network plays like a supervillain origin story. It’s about a bitter college student whose sleazy website designed to rank women’s looks eventually became a global network connecting people across the world. Following recent headlines about Facebook’s violations of its users’ privacy, The Social Network’s dark tale is more relevant than ever.
With a 7.8 rating on IMDb and a near-perfect score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Social Network is one of Fincher’s most celebrated films. It’s essentially the story of tech moguls arguing over their millions in a series of dry depositions, but thanks to Fincher’s masterful direction, Sorkin’s airtight script, and powerful performances by the cast — particularly Eisenberg and Garfield — The Social Network is a deeply compelling and cinematic movie. The camera work is engaging, the Oscar-winning editing is perfectly paced, and its study of the dangers of narcissism is suitably intense.