Andrew Garfield discussed playing OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman in the upcoming biopic Artificial.
The Amazing Spider-Man and Social Network actor got candid about portraying the controversial exec who has helped spearhead the AI revolution.
“I don’t know this person, to be clear,” Garfield said in new Esquire. “I don’t know Sam Altman. I’ve never met him. I was going off of the script and court transcripts and interviews and research, and we were telling a story. But I think anyone who takes on that level of responsibility for a company or a technology that you know is going to do a hell of a lot of damage to the soul of humanity [must have] a certain ability to dissociate.”
“But then the argument is, that if we weren’t all less rejecting in the first place, less ‘that’s not us’, then Donald Trump wouldn’t have been voted in twice, and Nigel Farage wouldn’t be anywhere near a position of power,” he continued. “Whereas if we go, ‘OK, interesting — where am I [in a] wannabe fascist, grifter, opportunist, power-hungry, ethic-less, spineless fucking pig?’ We can identify that this is the bad part of us. We know this in ourselves.”
Garfield was asked about his reported girlfriend Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick), and gave strong response to how he feels about media inquiries on the topic.
In Artificial directed by Luca Guadagnino, Garfield plays Altman during a five-day OpenAI leadership crisis when Altman was fired and then reinstated as CEO.
The film was famously dropped by Amazon MGM Studios, which developed and financed the project, then walked away from distributing the movie after announcing a $50 billion partnership and investment that involved OpenAI.
The company said that the film would “be better served if it were released by a different studio.”
The movie was then rescued by Neon (after Netflix, A24 and Focus Features passed), which plans to release the film later this year in order to qualify for this year’s Oscar race.
