Andrew Garfield on becoming Sam Altman in Artificial
Andrew Garfield studied what Sam Altman says about other people and what other people say about him to play the OpenAI chief executive.
Garfield portrays Altman in Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, and he described his preparation to The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet ahead of the film's world premiere at the 2026 New York Film Festival.
He said he worked with a Stanislavski technique, an acting method that builds a character through close observation of behaviour and relationships. In practice, Garfield said, that meant cataloguing Altman's language about colleagues and rivals and then setting it against how those people describe Altman in return.
He paired that text work with conversations. Garfield told the outlet he spoke to as many people as possible who know Altman in order to inform the portrayal, favouring first-hand impressions over public image alone.
The physical transformation took some trial and error. An attempt to use prosthetics to help Garfield better resemble Altman did not work, he said.
Artificial, from Neon, tells the story of the origins of OpenAI and the rise of artificial intelligence, according to Deadline. The drama revolves around Altman's firing and rehiring at OpenAI, as noted by Deadline. Elon Musk appears as a character alongside Altman and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.
Sutskever is played by Yura Borisov. Borisov told The Hollywood Reporter that he shares a Dec. 8 birthday with Sutskever and imagined a spiritual connection to help characterise the role. Will Angus plays Dario Amodei, the former OpenAI researcher turned Anthropic co-founder.
Garfield also said he was initially charmed by Altman before playing him, according to Variety. He did not present that first impression as the final portrait. The research, the interviews and the rehearsal room came after.
What makes this stand out is the contrast in method. One lead actor chased real-world conversations to test his assumptions. The other leaned into coincidence and intuition. For fans, this means two familiar technology figures will arrive on screen through very different doors, one built from reported memory and one from imagined kinship.
