Andrew Garfield admits he has a secret Instagram account.
“I’m as addicted as anybody. My screen time notifications are horrific to me. It’s like, I’ve given all of those hours to nothing,” he says. “It’s genuinely enraging because we don’t have as much control over these impulses as we should, and it’s been by design. It’s pretty dark when you look at it.”
His Instagram rabbit holes include “weird ceramics” and “lots of Japanese kind of craftspeople.”
Social media and technology are at the heart of Garfield’s new film, “The Magic Faraway Tree,” an adaptation of the Enid Blyton book series that is in theaters now. He and Claire Foy play Tim and Polly, a London couple who pack up their lives and their tech-dependent kids and move to a farm in the country. Their youngest child, Fran (Billie Gadsdon), doesn’t speak until she discovers a magical tree inhabited by elf-like creatures.
I spoke to Garfield talks about his busy year ahead — he also stars in the upcoming action period drama “The Uprising,” plays Sam Altman in Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” and portrays Roy in the Siegfried & Roy TV series “Wild Things” — and what he dreams of doing when he’s not working.
In “Faraway Tree,” your characters move to the country because it was a dream they wrote in their “dream binder” when they got married 15 years ago. What was in your dream binder 15 years ago?
I was 27. What was I doing then?
Oh, you know.
I was doing “Spider-Man.” That was a dream from 40 years ago, so I was checking off one of my big dreams. I was also checking off just being an actor. I still have dreams, but they’re slightly more earthbound than my previous ones. They’re maybe a bit more philosophical and existential than achievement based. Now I think it’s more I want a certain quality of life. I want a certain quality of relationships with my family and friends. I want a certain quality of relationship with myself.
Have you ever thought about leaving it all behind?
All the time. I’ve worked a lot this year. I’ve done like 11 months, 12 months, straight back-to-back projects. I want people to see those projects, so I’m gonna have to tell people about them. I get that. But if I had my druthers, people would just see them, and I could go whittle wood in the Somerset countryside and think about what the birds might be doing.
Tim and Polly are constantly trying to get the kids off their phones and tablets. Do you ever go on a phone detox?
I think we’ve all had the impulse to smash our phones or throw it into the forest or throw it into the sea because we know it’s taking our lives from us in some way. I’m not better than anybody else. I’ve been told, and I find it to be true, that if you leave your phone in another room, that does a lot of the heavy lifting. As soon as it’s in the room, you’re kind of fucked.
I sometimes put it in the trunk of my car so I don’t look at it while I’m driving. But then I’ll pull over, take it out of the trunk and keep driving.
Wow! You’ve got a problem, a big problem.
I like to tell myself it’s all for work.
We’ll justify addiction in whatever way we can.
Were phones banned on set?
They weren’t, but you know they didn’t really need to be. Our intention with the film wasn’t to damn technology. We didn’t want to say that all technology is evil and bad. We wanted to just have a healthier relationship with it. That was the ethos on set as well. We don’t need to ban stuff, but we just don’t want to be completely taken over by these things.
Judi Dench voices a smart fridge in the movie. Was this your first time working with her?
[Laughs] It was our first time. I didn’t even know I was working with her. It was retrospective. At the time of filming, it was just an imagined voice. And now, God, if I had known it was Judi, I would have played it differently. What an amazing woman! What a legend.
How did “Wild Things” come about?
I signed up about a year and a half before we started shooting, and then Jude came on. It was like, “Oh my God, Jude Law as Siegfried? Fuck, yes! I need to be front row for that.” I love him like my brother now.
What got you so interested in the project?
Their lives are stranger than fiction. It’s been a really challenging shoot and very, very rewarding. There’s not only this pizzazz and style and aesthetic and camp, but there’s also a big heart and soul underneath it. There’s a woundedness, a longing, and there’s love, and there’s danger. The stakes couldn’t be higher. You’re going to be giddy and giggling in your seat.
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