Why Andrew Garfield Gave Up Competitive Gymnastics at Age 12: ‘This Is Not a Childhood’

Long before Andrew Garfield started acting, he was a competitive athlete.

In an interview with Esquire published on Wednesday, Oct. 2, the actor, 41, opened up about taking up gymnastics as a kid while living with his parents, mom Lynn Garfield and dad Richard Garfield, in England.

Garfield became talented enough in the sport to begin training with a Russian coach, he told the magazine.

However, according to Garfield, when the coach began sitting on his back while he did the splits to increase his flexibility, he realized “this is not a childhood.”

The Social Network actor ultimately quit the sport at age 12, in what was “the first rebellion against my dad and his value system at the time: success and gold medals above any sense of joy, comfort, or pleasure,” he told Esquire.

Since his father was a swimming coach when he quit gymnastics, Garfield told the outlet that he tried it out but ended up quitting as well.

“It was like this Truman Show feeling where you’re like, ‘I feel there is more. And I can’t identify what that more is, but I know it exists, and if it doesn’t exist, I am in big trouble,’ ” said Garfield.

The movie star told the outlet that it was his mother, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2019, that encouraged him to explore acting.

Years after many noteworthy films, including The Social Network, Tick, Tick…Boom!andThe Amazing Spider-Man, the actor is set to star alongside Florence Pugh in his latest project We Live in Time.

“Almut (Pugh) and Tobias (Garfield) are brought together in a surprise encounter that changes their lives,” an official synopsis for the film explains. “As they embark on a path challenged by the limits of time, they learn to cherish each moment of the unconventional route their love story has taken, in filmmaker John Crowley’s decade-spanning, deeply moving romance.”

We Live in Time arrives in theaters on Friday, Oct. 11.