Andrew Garfield on baking cookies and keeping perfume to remember his mum

Andrew Garfield says he bakes cookies every year in memory of his late mother.

The double Oscar nominee‘s mother Lynn Garfield, from Essex, died in 2019 from pancreatic cancer.

In a conversation about his new film We Live In Time, he told Sky News about the special ways he likes to remember her.

“My mum had the most incredible chocolate chip cookie recipe that I will do every year on the anniversary of her birth and on the anniversary of her death.

“So, I will bake them, and we will all eat them, but I’ll leave a few out for her somewhere, you know, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Santa Claus at Christmas or something.”

The English-American actor says he looks to keep the connection to his mother alive and notes that he has some of her keepsakes in his own home.

“I have her perfume in my house that my mum used to wear when I was a kid. I have it, like, in a very special place. I’ll just like [smell it], when I need it.

“It’s like in the missing and the longing, you actually get closer to the person. It’s a weird thing. As we reach out in grief, we actually feel much closer to the person so it’s this weird conundrum”.

‘Leaving a legacy behind’

Garfield stars alongside Florence Pugh in the romance film We Live In Time, which follows an up-and-coming chef and a Weetabix salesman through a decade of their love story.

Pugh says she loves playing “really strong-willed women” and says playing a woman dealing with ovarian cancer allowed her to look at the idea of creating a legacy.

“She’s constantly juggling whether she does something for herself, does something for her daughter, does something for her family and ultimately, she’s allowed to do all of those things.

“I do believe that she is trying to leave that kind of legacy behind so that her daughter is proud of her.

“Just because you are a parent and you’re a mum does not mean that your wills and wants also completely vanish and disappear and you can’t have or want them too”.

‘A level of detail and care’

We Live In Time is directed by Brooklyn filmmaker John Crowley.

Having previously worked with Garfield on Boy A, the Irish director says seeing Garfield and Pugh on screen together is magic.

“All that life experience is present in his performance,” he says.

“I wouldn’t say he’s vastly different. I think the level of detail and care that he puts in the work is every bit as much as it was back then, there’s just more there now”.

We Live In Time is in cinemas on Wednesday 1 January.