Oscar-Nominated ‘Tick, Tick… BOOM!’ Star Andrew Garfield On The “Cosmic Serendipity” That Brought Jonathan Larson Into His Life
The last time Andrew Garfield was shortlisted for Leading Man was in 2016 for his role as true-life pacifist hero Desmond Doss in Mel Gibson’s war drama Hacksaw Ridge. His performance in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick… BOOM! could not be more different. In this stylized, unconventional biopic, he stars as Jonathan Larson, a playwright working in musical theater who died in January 1996 on the morning of the biggest day of his life—the first preview of his Broadway hit Rent. Many expected tick, tick… BOOM! to tell the story of that artistic and commercial triumph, but no—it tells instead of the myriad failures that Larson experienced, with dogged determination, in the run-up.