5 Most Underrated Andrew Garfield Movie Performances

Andrew Garfield has played many big roles. He's been the amazing Spider-Man several times, for goodness sake, and that's what the casual viewer might know him from. But his range has taken him to battlefields, into Silicon Valley, into fantasy and drama and crime and romance and everything in between. He's got incredible range as an actor.

He was born in 1983—in Los Angeles, actually. Then he was raised in Surrey, England. His mother is British, and his father is American. He trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 2004.

Besides being the spidery superhero, he's had two Oscar-nominated turns, one for his portrayal of a Broadway composer (tick, tick… BOOM!) and another as a non-violent soldier in an active warzone (Hacksaw Ridge).

As someone who came out of the British television space and indies, there might be a few parts in there you missed. We've got five often-overlooked films you should revisit to see the true expanse of his talents.

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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

It wouldn't be a surprise if you missed this one. Terry Gilliam is an imaginative and offbeat director (see Brazil), and Doctor Parnassus got more renown for being the film that Heath Ledger was mid-shoot on when he died. As a result, the film pivoted to filling the role with a handful of other actors, including Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell across "mirror dimensions."

Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) sells his daughter's soul to the devil for immortality, and when the devil comes knocking to collect, they make another wager. First to collect five souls wins! Parnassus takes his theater troupe through different realities on their journey.

Garfield plays Anton, a barker who falls for Parnassus' daughter Valentina while also serving as his sidekick. He later talked about being grateful for the experience with Ledger.

He said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via People): "I still have lots of mementos of his. I remember the first day I met him he was wearing these amazing Ray-Ban sunglasses, and I said, 'Hey, cool sunglasses,' and he was like, 'Oh yeah?' And the next day they were in my dressing room. He just left them for me."

He added, "He was just a very generous, like, beautiful creative spirit."

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Red Riding

This is technically a film trilogy that aired on TV, and it's one that many U.S. fans probably haven't ever even heard of. The films include In the Year of Our Lord 1974, 1980, and 1983, and were commissioned by Channel 4. They were directed by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, and Anand Tucker.

The films (or limited series, if you want to get technical) were based on David Peace's Yorkshire Noir novels, which drew upon the real-life Yorkshire Ripper case. Spoiler alert: the murderer was found to be Peter Sutcliffe.

Garfield starred in Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, the first installment of the trilogy. He played Eddie Dunford, a young newspaper reporter covering the case. The film won three BAFTAs. It was shot on Super 16mm film (subsequent films were shot on 35mm, the third on a RED).

Marsh told Tribeca, "Film noir always has the flawed central character—in Julian's film, it's very clear that Eddie is not an overtly sympathetic character."

Jarrold added, "The moment Eddie looks outside his ego is the moment he realizes he is doomed, frankly."

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Never Let Me Go

This is an Alex Garland script from a Kazuo Ishiguro novel, and it's a movie so depressing that I've never gone back to it.

Garfield plays Tommy alongside Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley in a tragic love triangle in which we slowly realize that all three are actually clones raised to donate their organs in a dystopian version of reality.

"Andrew Garfield was always the one to beat to play Tommy," director Mark Romanek told Slashfilm. "I saw lots of great young actors, but I was sort of like, 'If we can find someone better than Andrew, fine. But until then, it's Andrew.' He didn't know that. Because I saw him in this great film called Boy A, which I really recommend your readers see; it's a kind of perfect little movie. And his performance in that is just as breakthrough and astonishing as Carey's was in An Education; it's just fewer people saw it."

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99 Homes

Nothing like a movie about the American housing crisis! Garfield plays Dennis Nash, who is evicted from his home by a real estate broker (Michael Shannon, another acting powerhouse). The agent then hires Nash, an unemployed construction worker, to do the same work with him. Nash agrees out of desperation, trying to get his foreclosed home back.

It's a deal-with-the-devil story that earned Shannon a Golden Globe nomination.

Speaking to Cinezine Kane, Garfield said of Nash, "We are a sea of Willie Lomans, trying to be known, trying to be known in fucked up ways, in the ways that we're told to be known through these really fucked up values."

Director Ramin Bahrani told Slant, "When Dennis is doing the evictions, every person on whose door he knocks was a real person—and that's really their home. I found them during the location-scouting process and got to know them and conceived [their characters] based on who they were. … I wouldn't tell Andrew who was an actor and who wasn't one. He had no idea what was going to happen when he knocked on the door. He just knew what he should say."

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Under the Silver Lake

I think this weird little noir from David Robert Mitchell was perhaps unfairly maligned, though we'll admit it is a little long and confusing at points. Garfield plays Sam, a slacker who becomes obsessed with investigating the disappearance of his neighbor (Riley Keough) and tries to piece together random clues in a city-wide conspiracy.

"[Mitchell] didn't really have to pitch it to me," Garfield told Empire. "I'd seen It Follows, and I loved it, and I had seen The Myth Of The American Sleepover and I thought it was so unique and specific in its vision. I was just so impressed with him as a filmmaker. I got sent the script for Under The Silver Lake, and it was as mind-bending in word as it was, in deed, as it were. It was 160-odd pages, which is about 30 or 40 pages more than the usual script."

It has a bit of a cult following now, but maybe with an edit this could have been easier to digest for the average viewer.