Andrew Garfield Says ‘We Live in Time’ Helped Him Navigate Mid-Life

Irish director John Crowley (“Boy A,” “Brooklyn”) and his “We Live in Time” actor Andrew Garfield hosted the last of this year’s star-studded San Sebastian press conferences for their Official Selection player, which will close the 72nd edition of the festival this evening.

Also starring Florence Pugh, “We Live in Time,” written by acclaimed playwright Nick Payne (“The Crown”), is the time-twisted love story of Almut and Tobias. Through disordered snapshots of their life together, the two experience great joys like parenthood, meeting each other’s families, a marriage proposal, and life-changing tragedies such as divorce and a recurring ovarian cancer diagnosis. The couple learns through their shared memories to cherish each moment of the roundabout path their relationship has traveled.

During Saturday morning’s press conference, Garfield said he was in a contemplative place when Paynes screenplay crossed his desk. “When I read [the script], I was in deep contemplation of the meaning of life. As always, but maybe more pronounced in that moment. I was thinking about life, death, love, meaning, time… standing at the age of 39 and 40, kind of a mid-life crisis, looking forward, looking backward, looking exactly where I am, and thinking, ‘What now?’”

“This script arrived, and it was as if I had written it from that place,” he elaborated, recalling that he had to ask himself, ‘How did I write this so well? I’m not a writer.’”

The actor reasoned that if both he and Payne were musing on the same ideas, “these things, “there’s gotta be something to it, something universal in this story.”

“We Live in Time,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month, is produced by European powerhouse Studiocanal – which is also selling the film – and Benedict Cumberbatch’s SunnyMarch in the U.K. Indie heavyweight A24 will give the film a limited theatrical release in the U.S. starting Oct. 11.

More to come…