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Andrew Garfield, 39, proved he takes his acting career very seriously, in his latest interview. The actor revealed he abstained from both sex and food when preparing to play a priest in the 2016 film, Silence, on a new episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. “I did a bunch of spiritual practices every day, I created new rituals, I was celibate for six months and I was fasting a lot,” he said about his experience.
“It was very cool, man,” he continued. “I had some pretty wild, trippy experiences from starving myself of sex and food at that time.”
Andrew also revealed he spent a year studying under Jesuit writer Father James Martin, whom he called his “friend and spiritual director.” Martin helped him research Catholicism and showed him how to do a series of spiritual exercises to get ready for his role in the drama, which was directed by Martin Scorsese. The talented star acknowledged the benefits of the type of method acting he took part in for the role, but also warned that it can sometimes get out of hand if not properly executed.
“There [have] been a lot of misconceptions about what method acting is, I think,” he explained on the podcast. “People are still acting in that way, and it’s not about being an a**hole to everyone on set. It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances and being really nice to the crew simultaneously and being a normal human being and being able to drop it when you need to and staying in it when you want to stay in it.”
Andrew’s intense acting style can take its toll, which could be why he decided to take a break from it for a while. “I’m going to rest for a little bit,” he told Variety in Apr. He further explained that he wants to be “ordinary for a while” and he did just that during a recent vacation in Bali. He made headlines for being spotted shirtless and showing off his muscles while taking in the gorgeous sights of the exotic location.