Hollywood News Now: 'Amazing Spider-Man': Actor spins a wider web

If you were asked to study the movements and behavior of any animal, take on its characteristics and embody them in human form, what would you choose?

The slow loris? Anyone? Anyone?

"It's the most incredible, adorable thing you've ever seen," Andrew Garfield said last month while sprawled, loris-like, across two chairs at the Crosby Hotel in New York. He picked the wide-eyed, long-limbed, slow-moving primate - generally docile, but with a toxic bite - years ago during an animal study class at the Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London.

"They move like they're in slow motion. It's beautiful. It's absolutely stunning."

Back then, Garfield couldn't have imagined how closely the exercise would mirror the preparation for his first action hero role, as Peter Parker in this summer's "The Amazing Spider-Man."

"What happens when you've got spider DNA running in your bloodstream?" the actor asked, fiddling with his Converse high-tops. "I studied spider movements to prepare. It's going to be able to make a teenage boy have a stillness, a lightness." He paused, then stopped fiddling.

Garfield, 28, has already proved his acting chops to the theater cognoscenti. The next day he would attend the Tony Awards as a nominee for featured actor in a play. Though slight of frame and baby-faced, he took on the famously difficult role of 34-year-old Biff Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." The New York Times called his a "wrenching performance, exquisitely calibrated." (He lost to Christian Borle in "Peter and the Starcatcher.")

'I want to stay an actor'

On Tuesday, dressed in a skintight spandex suit, he'll announce himself to a much wider audience, though he chafes at the idea that he's weeks away from becoming an icon.

"Stan Lee is an icon," he said. "Woody Allen is an icon. I'm an actor, and I want to stay an actor. But I'm aware of the hypocrisy of that because I know what I've stepped into."

The action film is directed by Mark Webb, who made "(500) Days of Summer," and focuses on aspects of the Spider-Man saga not already familiar to cinematic audiences of the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire trilogy, including the loss of Peter's parents; his relationship with the police chief's daughter, Gwen Stacy (played by Garfield's girlfriend, Emma Stone); and his battles with the Lizard, a favored villain of the comic book fans.

Long time preparing

Garfield has a picture of himself, age 3, dressed as Spider-Man for Halloween, and says he's been preparing for the role ever since.

Born in Los Angeles to an American father and British mother, Garfield was raised in Surrey and began taking acting classes when he was 12. At 22, he gave a notable performance as Romeo at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre and later received a Bafta award for his work in 2007's "Boy A," in which he portrayed a young man reintegrating into the world after being imprisoned as a youth.

In 2010, with a one-two punch of "Never Let Me Go" and David Fincher's "The Social Network," in which he played Eduardo Saverin, Mark Zuckerberg's business partner, he landed firmly in cinema's international arena.

Yet "The Amazing Spider-Man" is, he admits, on a different order of magnitude than any of his previous work. The cast is star-studded, the production extravagant - 3-D cameras, stunts, huge sets - and the character well known and beloved.

To bulk up his thin frame, he trained six days a week for six months, doing a mix of trampoline work, basketball, martial arts and gymnastics. Webb encouraged improvisation and actor suggestions, and the long skateboarding sequence in the film, which shows Parker flying around an abandoned warehouse, was Garfield's idea.

A skateboarder

"Peter Parker has never been a skateboarder, but I was one growing up," he says. "I still am now. I cruise around New York at night. It's one of my favorite things to do."

Though he's 28, playing a teenager came naturally.

"I feel close to it still," he said. "I still feel pretty mixed up as a person. That existential thing, I get that: 'Who the hell am I, and why am I not happy?' "

Maintaining poise

It remains to be seen how the actor will handle the inevitable onslaught of attention.

A YouTube clip from March, shot by a member of the paparazzi aggressively trying to take a picture of Garfield and Stone in Manhattan, hints at his approach.

Garfield walks toward the camera, introduces himself and politely entreats the photographer to act like a human being and leave them alone. When it becomes clear the tactic isn't working - the photographer shrieks, "You chose the life of a celebrity!" - Garfield smiles, bids him a nice day and walks away.

"I had empathy for that guy that day," Garfield said. "I could tell he wasn't proud of what he was doing. You have to approach people with respect and understanding and empathy. It's the only way we're going to get through this life with happiness."