Most performers who have worked with David Fincher have at least one story regarding the director’s proclivity for filming many takes of the same scene. Andrew Garfield reminisced on his breakout performance in David Fincher’s Oscar-winning “The Social Network” and the unforgettable day on set where he filmed around 40 takes of the very same torturous scene in a subsequent interview with Collider prior to the release of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”
“Jesse [Eisenberg], laptop smash, that day, that long goddamn day, and Fincher being such a good dad that day,” Garfield answered when asked about his most memorable day on “The Social Network” set. “He was the perfect sports dad. He was instilling me with, ‘Keep doing it, and you can keep doing it, believe that you can keep doing… I know I’m going to ask you to do this a lot, and your voice is going to be tired, and your heart is going to be tired, and your body’s going to be exhausted, and I know you’re going to hate me, and that’s okay because we are going to get it absolutely perfect.’”
Garfield continued, “And then at the end, instead of saying, ‘We’re moving on,’ I was sat on the floor after taking 35, 40 of my close-up of that scene, which you can imagine would have been a lot of screaming and agony. And I’m sat on the floor, just wiped, exhausted, thinking we’re probably going to go again another 10 times. He just walks up to me, up that corridor from this monitor, and he puts his hand out to me and pulls me up and shakes my hand, and he says, ‘Moving on.’ And that was that. So that was a beautiful moment. I felt very gratified. Leaving it all in the field. That was a beautiful day. I loved it.”
Garfield’s portrayal in “The Social Network” is still remembered as one of his most acclaimed appearances. “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (September 17 in theatres from Searchlight Pictures) and “Tick, Tick Boom” (streaming November 19 on Netflix) are two of the actor’s upcoming films.