Actor Andrew Garfield is opening up about the psychological toll of portraying OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in the upcoming biopic “Artificial.”
Mr. Garfield said in an Esquire magazine profile that he structured his performance without meeting Mr. Altman.
“I don’t know this person, to be clear,” Mr. Garfield told Esquire. “I don’t know Sam Altman. I’ve never met him.
“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,” he said.
Mr. Garfield said he isn’t typically drawn to characters like Mr. Altman because playing them forces him to access parts of himself he dislikes.
The film, directed by Luca Guadagnino, chronicles the 2023’s five-day OpenAI leadership crisis in which Mr. Altman was fired and then reinstated as chief executive.
Amazon MGM Studios, which developed and financed “Artificial,” dropped the project after announcing a $50 billion partnership with OpenAI, saying the film would “be better served if it were released by a different studio.”
Independent film production company Neon has picked up distribution rights and plans to release the film later this year to qualify for awards-season consideration, after Netflix, A24 and Focus Features reportedly passed.
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