Actor Andrew Garfield, From Hating Religion to Falling In Love With Jesus

Andrew Garfield has come a long way since his days as The Amazing Spiderman. He used to resist religion. Now, he tells a different story.

In a more recent film, Silence, Andrew Garfield plays Sebastian Rodriguez—a role in which he had to lose more than 40 pounds to play.

Embracing religion, Andrew Garfield engaged in spiritual practices for his new role.

In preparation for his newest acting role, Garfield practiced the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, and in the process found himself “falling in love” with Jesus.

While Andrew Garfield is wary of landing on any religion with “certainty,” as he explained in his interview with Stephen Colbert, he found the exercises and the things he learned about Jesus to be life-changing.

He told America Magazine, “I felt so bad for [Jesus] and angry on his behalf when I finally did meet him, because everyone has given him such a bad name… And he has been used for so many dark things.”

The film tells the story of Jesuit priests losing their faith in the face of persecution in Japan. So it’s awesome to see how an opposing circumstance—priests who are losing their faith—would be the catalyst behind Garfield’s newfound relationship with Jesus.

The actor reflected on the profound experience in an interview with American Magazine:

What was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing… That was the most remarkable thing—falling in love, and how easy it was to fall in love with Jesus.

And these words are coming from the same guy who described his religious beliefs as the following to the Hollywood Reporter: “I consider myself pantheist, agnostic, occasionally atheist and a little bit Jewish, but mostly confused.”