After receiving rave reviews for his chilling portrayal of OpenAI guru Sam Altman, Andrew Garfield is headed towards a busy awards season and that now includes a prestigious new honor.
The Santa Barbara Film Festival on Tuesday said the two-time Oscar-nominated actor will receive the Maltin Modern Master Award at the fest’s 2027 edition. Garfield will join renowned film critic Leonard Maltin for an onstage conversation February 6 to reflect on his acclaimed career and wide-ranging body of work.
The honor comes on the heels of his latest performance in Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, the story of OpenAI and a two-decade artificial intelligence arms race. The film recently premiered at the New York Film Festival to acclaim and will be released theatrically by Neon on Christmas Day.
“Andrew Garfield has long since proven himself to critics and audiences alike. It’s no simple matter to balance a career between mainstream Hollywood movies and challenging director-driven projects, but he has done exactly that and done it well,” said Maltin.
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The Modern Master Award was established in 1995. Created to honor an individual who has enriched the culture through accomplishments in the motion picture industry, it was re-named the Maltin Modern Master Award in 2015 in honor of longtime SBIFF moderator Maltin. Past recipients include last year’s Adam Sandler and Angelina Jolie, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Robert Downey Jr., Denzel Washington, Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, and Christopher Plummer, and acclaimed filmmakers including Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood and Peter Jackson.
A two-time Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe and Tony Award winner,Garfield has established himself as one of the most versatile actors of his generation. He earned his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of World War II medic Desmond Doss in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and his second for his performance as composer Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick…Boom! for which he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor – Musical or Comedy. He also received a Golden Globe nom for David Fincher’s The Social Network.
Garfield’s credits include Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes, Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go, John Crowley’s We Live In Time opposite Florence Pugh and Guadagnino’s After The Hunt opposite Julia Roberts and Ayo Edebiri. He also brought Peter Parker to the screen in The Amazing Spider-Man films and reprised the role in Spider-Man: No Way Home. His most recent film, Paul Greengrass’ The Uprising, was released last month.
On TV, Garfield received an Emmy nomination for FX’s limited series Under the Banner of Heaven. His stage career includes a Tony-winning performance as Prior Walter in the Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels In America, as well as a Tony-nominated turn in Death of a Salesman. He will next appear opposite Jude Law in the Apple TV limited series Wild Things about Siegfried & Roy.
The 42nd Santa Barbara Film Festival will run February 3-11, 2027.
