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One thing was clear from watching Sunday night’s Golden Globes: The FCC has loosened its rules about broadcasting pornography. About halfway through the evening, Kerry Washington and Andrew Garfield appeared onstage at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to present the awards for Best Female and Male Actors in a Musical/Comedy Motion Picture to Demi Moore and Sebastian Stan, respectively. But as Washington began reading the pair’s scripted introduction, Garfield, standing beside her, initiated what can only be described as a silent soft-core performance in which he quietly made love to the camera and to those of us watching at home—or maybe just to me?
Dressed in a dark green ensemble that accentuated his spray-tanned olive skin, Garfield bit his lip and squinted his eyes in a smoldering stare. He theatrically donned a pair of glasses that magically made him even hotter, like some sort of reverse Clark Kent. At one point, he even adjusted the front placket of his shiny satin shirt so that it revealed more of his chest and the gold necklace with a green pendant that had the good fortune of adorning it.
It was only during my third or fourth rewatch of the moment that the steam from my ears began to settle and I was finally able to hear what Washington was actually saying. “A great performance has the power to transport us,” she offered, right as Garfield lifted his spectacles and made sure his suit jacket was wide open. “When an actor falls so deeply into character that we as an audience get lost in their portrayal, the result is magic. We become spellbound—unable to take our eyes off them.”
Amen, girl. Amen.
I know I wasn’t the only one who felt compelled to take a pregnancy test after Garfield was done with his set. Millions of people watched a clip I shared in a moment of deep horniness of the moment on X, which prompted a slew of replies that were somehow hornier than my original post. Garfield and his “slutty glasses” were soon the subject of articles on BuzzFeed, InStyle, and People. “Why is Andrew looking at me like that?” read the top comment on the video from the official Golden Globes YouTube account. “The chemistry me and Andrew have is willdddddddd,” read another.
When many of us first met Garfield, in 2010’s The Social Network and Never Let Me Gohe was a lanky, clean-cut actor playing mostly quiet and sensitive souls. His subsequent turn as Peter Parker/Spider-Man was largely charming, as was the boyfriend energy he displayed with his multiyear coupling with co-star Emma Stone. He always had the air of a guy you could take home to meet your mom: cute, dependable, safe. But in the past few years, something has shifted. According to many people online, Garfield has entered what can only be described as his fuckboy era. This is a loose term, and one that’s arguably evolved over time to shed some of its most negative connotations. Today fuckboys are best understood as lotharios—at least, that’s the definition used in the 2021 reality competition FBoy Island (hosted, in a nice twist of fate, by Sunday’s Globes emcee, Nikki Glaser). And while I’m not saying Garfield is some sort of ruthless seducer or avowed heartbreaker, he is definitely exuding a more confident sexual aura lately (perhaps because of work he may or may not have had done on his hairline). He’s scruffier. He’s buffer. He’s cockier. He wears a chain necklace, the international symbol of Guys Who Fuck.
Consider the very public, yearslong flirtation between Garfield and Amelia Dimoldenberg, a dynamic that culminated in an October appearance on her show Chicken Shop Date wherein you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. Or there’s the increasing number of shirtless photo shoots he’s done in recent years. In 2022, for example, he went shirtless for GQ, lying in a sand dune, clad only in a pair of $3,500 Alexander McQueen leather pants and staring up at the camera. In other shots for the magazine, he contorted himself to best show off his newly muscular physique. And just this week, Garfield was shirtless once more for W magazine, quite literally slipping off his robe and flexing for the camera.
Let’s not kid ourselves—there’s an obvious double standard here. Younger female stars are expected to embrace their sex appeal right from the start, and we generally don’t grant them the grace of “lanky and awkward” years that Garfield was afforded. They’re also expected to walk a tightrope, never veering too far into vanity, lest they come across as “bitches” or, worse, “sluts.” In 2012 Angelina Jolie appeared onstage at the Oscars to present an award and struck a pose in which she thrust her leg out from her Versace gown. The sultry moment went viral, not because of public thirst but because of public mockery. “Look at meeee!!” read a tweet from @AngiesRightLeg, a Twitter account that quickly sprang up and attracted thousands of followers. “You have to admit I’m one hell of a leg.” When he accepted the Academy Award from Jolie, the Descendants co-screenwriter Jim Rash even imitated her stance, drawing laughs from the crowd in response to what he later termed a “loving tribute.”
It was ultimately somewhat ironic on Sunday, then, that after Garfield’s little show of seduction, he and Washington presented a Golden Globe to Moore for her work in The Substance. In a moving acceptance speech, Moore described a career of being pigeonholed as a pretty “popcorn actress” that had ultimately been transformed thanks to her now award-winning role of an aging woman consumed by vanity. “There’s been a lot of talk about comebacks—Pamela Anderson, Demi Moore,” host Glaser quipped. “If you’re a woman over 50 in a lead role, they call it a comeback. If you’re a guy over 50 in a lead role, congratulations: You’re about to play Sydney Sweeney’s boyfriend.”
Don’t be mistaken—I’m not suggesting that Garfield’s recent shift means he’s become shallow. His appearance on The Colbert Report a few years back, during which he discussed grieving his mother, who died in 2019, was extremely poignant and profound. Likewise, the tears he shed this year while reading a “Modern Love” essay for the New York Times appeared similarly deeply felt and prompted a spontaneous-yet-transcendent musing from him on the meaning of life and art. For my money, he was also robbed of an Oscar for his sensitive and magical work in the 2021 musical Tick, Tick … Boom!
But what is clear is that as he ages, the actor has learned to finally weaponize his good looks and sex appeal in a way we expect of our biggest Hollywood stars, by embracing the art of public seduction. Indeed, other hunks have burst onto the scene without apparently seeing any dichotomy between looks and talent. Look at how Glen Powell exploded in the industry last year, with instant confidence in his appearance via shirtless photo shoots, wet T-shirts, and selfies for which he wore only a towel. Or how Jonathan Bailey, another new but clearly self-assured megastar, leveraged two sexually charged performances in Bridgerton and Fellow Travelers into a series of equally sexy shirtless spreads and red-carpet appearances. Both these men have used their looks to keep our focus on them from the jump of their stardom, while Garfield has taken an almost tediously long time to get to the same place. He didn’t start out a pinup star, but he’s certainly becoming one.
In a reverse of what Moore noted in her speech, it’s one thing to be considered an Actor with a capital A in Hollywood; it’s entirely another to be a heartthrob. With two Oscar nominations under his belt, Garfield has already proved he’s the former. Now it appears he’s not only comfortable with but adamant and shameless about putting in the work to become the latter.
