Andrew Garfield has spoken about his role as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film Artificial. The movie follows the dramatic events at OpenAI in November 2023, when Altman was suddenly removed as CEO before returning to the company days later. Garfield said he has never met Altman. Instead, he studied the script, court transcripts, interviews and other research to prepare for the role. He also reflected on what it means to play someone leading a company and technology that he believes could have a major impact on humanity.
“I don’t know Sam Altman. I’ve never met him,” Garfield said in an interview with Esquire U.K. “I was going off of the script and court transcripts and interviews and research, and we were telling a story. But I think anyone who takes on that level of responsibility for a company or a technology that you know is going to do a hell of a lot of damage to the soul of humanity (must have) a certain ability to dissociate.”
Garfield explained that his acting process involved finding parts of himself that could connect with Altman. He referred to Carl Jung’s idea of the “shadow self.” “The aspects of ourselves that we disown. There’s something there for me to integrate, because I’m so afraid of being it,” Garfield said.
“But then the argument is, that if we weren’t all less rejecting in the first place, less ‘that’s not us’, then Donald Trump wouldn’t have been voted in twice, and Nigel Farage wouldn’t be anywhere near a position of power,” he continued. “Whereas if we go, ‘OK, interesting – where am I [in a] wannabe fascist, grifter, opportunist, power-hungry, ethic-less, spineless fucking pig?’ We can identify that this is the bad part of us. We know this in ourselves.”
Artificial is written by Simon Rich and also features Monica Barbaro as former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever and Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk.
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Amazon MGM Studios originally developed and financed the film, which had a reported budget of around $40 million. However, the studio dropped the project in June. Amazon said the movie would be better served by another studio.
Neon later acquired the worldwide theatrical rights to Artificial. The film is directed by Luca Guadagnino.