Andrew Garfield Felt the Pressure of Working on Martin Scorsese's Passion Project 'Silence'
Martin Scorsese first announced he would adapt Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence — about a Portuguese priest dispatched to 17th century Japan to investigate the reported apostasy of his mentor — in 2007. Scorsese planned to have film be the follow-up to Shutter Island (2010), but it would take nearly a decade for the iconic director’s passion project to hit movie screens.
Andrew Garfield, who plays the lead character Father Rodrigues (a role initially intended for Gael García Bernal), admits he felt the pressure of headlining a project so near and dear to the Goodfellas filmmaker.
“Of course, [the pressure was] subconscious, conscious, unconscious, pseudo-conscious,” Garfield told Yahoo Movies (watch above). “But it’s the kind of pressure that I think is a propellant, you know? It has the power to shut you down or it has the power to make you grow in size. To go beyond what you felt you were capable of. I hope it was the kind of pressure that did that.”
Related: Andrew Garfield Talks About Weight Loss for ‘Silence’
Liam Neeson, who plays Ferreira, the missing priest who has reportedly turned his back on his faith, revealed in 2015 that Scorsese required, appropriately, “absolute silence on the set” of Silence.
“Yeah, he does like that,” Garfield said. “I think it’s simply he’s so in tune with what he’s doing. He’s in the scene with you. It’s in his head and it’s being realize in front of him simultaneously. So he requires this pin-drop silence a lot of the time.”
Silence is now in theaters.
Watch Garfield talk about his two faith-driven films now in theaters:
