Hollywood star Andrew Garfield has spoken about "falling in love with Jesus Christ' in preparation for the Martin Scorsese film 'Silence'.
In the just-released film 'Silence' Garfield plays Jesuit Priest Father Sebastião Rodrigues. Garfield undertook the Spiritual Exercises, a set of prayers, meditations and practices written by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, in preparation for the role.
"What was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing," he said in an interview with Jesuit Brendan Busse for America Magazine.
"There were so many things in the Exercises that changed me and transformed me, that showed me who I was...and where I believe God wants me to be," said Garfield.
Garfield was not a Christian before he undertook the role. "Films were really my church," he said. "As a young kid it was movies and books; it was nothing remarkable really, just that is where I felt soothed, that is where I felt most myself...safest."
Garfield reflected not only on how he met Jesus, but on his awareness of how Jesus had been misused or misunderstood. "I felt so bad for [Jesus] and angry on his behalf when I finally did meet him, because everyone has given him such a bad name... And he has been used for so many dark things."
In the interview Garfield also speaks openly about his own feelings of pain, dissatisfaction, and the need to please others. He said: "The main thing that I wanted to heal, that I brought to Jesus, that I brought to the Exercises, was this feeling of not-enough-ness," he said. "This feeling of that forever longing for the perfect expression of this thing that is inside each of us. That wound of not-enough-ness. That wound of feeling like what I have to offer is never enough.
Garfield has spoken about his new-found faith before, and how he is working out his "very specific relationship with Jesus".
"This is my sincere prayer," Garfield said to Busse. "I'm praying that I'm freer to offer myself vulnerably...and that these other voices, whether they're internal or external, don't have the same power over that flame, over the ability to offer that purest, vulnerable, cracked open heart...in service of God, in service of the greater good, in service of love, in service of the divine. I feel like this is what God is showing me."
