Garfield played Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin in 2010’s ‘The Social Network,’ and is now playing OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman in ‘Artificial’

NEED TO KNOW

• Andrew Garfield originally intended to play Mark Zuckerberg in 2010’s The Social Network before Jesse Eisenberg took on the role, while Garfield instead played Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin
• Garfield is reflecting on the experience now that he is playing another majorly impactful tech CEO in Artificial as OpenAI’s Sam Altman
• Artificial, Garfield’s new movie about the company behind ChatGPT, is in theaters Dec. 25

Andrew Garfield’s role as Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network is still on the actor’s mind as he steps into a new movie about a tech company with tremendous power.

Garfield, 43, spoke with GQ in an interview published Wednesday, Nov. 4, regarding his new movie Artificial, in which he portrays OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman. The role had him reflecting on when he starred in 2010’s The Social Network after losing out on the role of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Jesse Eisenberg.

“I mean, yes. One has to. This is the job,” Garfield told the outlet when asked if he related to Altman, 41, when prepping to play him for the new movie. “And this is why I wanted to do it: Because with The Social Network, I was getting ready to play Mark Zuckerberg, and then [director] David Fincher calls me in and says, ‘We found someone that is just going to do it better. It’s Jesse, but we think you could also play this part. And you’re a very emotional actor, Andrew, so why would we waste all of that on someone who doesn’t seem to feel many emotions?’ So Eduardo became my kind of guy, and I was very happy with that.”

“But it left a little dangling thread, and I was like, ‘I need to understand,’ ” he added. “Because I started to explore what it takes to win, to win on that level.”

The Social Network dramatized the origins of how Zuckerberg, 42, and Saverin, 44, founded Facebook while studying at Harvard University in 2004 and how the pair fell out in subsequent years as the company grew at an exponential pace.

Artificial, meanwhile, follows the founding of OpenAI and the eventual firing (and then re-hiring) of Altman as CEO.

Garfield told GQ that he views himself as “a competitive person” after growing up as an athlete before he turned to acting. The actor similarly told Esquire U.K. in an August interview that he thinks of Altman and Zuckerberg as figures who have a competitive-at-all-costs mindset.

“Yeah, I think I’ve been fascinated since I missed that opportunity — though I got given the most amazing opportunity [of playing Eduardo Saverin] and wouldn’t have it any other way — but I definitely feel I’m closer to understanding the drives, the psychology,” he told Esquire of The Social Network and whether something has changed in him over the years that now allows him to portray Altman.

“With Sam, everything’s a game. It’s a game, and everything gets very, very simple,” he said. “It’s, ‘I know I have to win this game, because I am the most ‘good’ person, and if I don’t win this game, Elon Musk wins this game.’ ”

In Artificial, Garfield costars with Yura Borisov (Anora), who portrays OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Ike Barinholtz plays Musk, 55, who is also a co-founder of OpenAI, and the movie’s cast also includes Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman and Mark Rylance.

Eisenberg, who played Zuckerberg in The Social Network, notably did not return for writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up The Social Reckoning, which hit theaters in October. Eisenberg has said he no longer wants to be associated with Zuckerberg through that movie.

“I’m not concerned about that,” Garfield told GQ on whether he worries he and Altman will be connected through Artificial once the movie releases. “And I don’t think Jesse should be either. I think he’s such an incredible artist and an actor and director [and] writer.”

He continued, “I feel safe in that I will make other things and this will be a part of my work and that’s that. And there’ll be other things that take away from that. I know the beginning of my obituary will be ‘Erstwhile Spider-Man.’ You know what I mean?”

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Artificial is in theaters Dec. 25.

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