For a long time, men have been told that showing emotions is a sign of weakness. However, Andrew Garfield isn't afraid to be open about his grief and uses his emotions as a powerful tool in his films. In a video from Sesame Street’s nonprofit, "Sesame Workshop,” the 41-year-old actor appears with Elmo to discuss grief and vulnerability.
Andrew Garfield attends the "We Live In Time" Headline Gala during the 68th BFI London Film Festival in London, England (Image Source: Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
In the now-viral clip with over 14 million views, Elmo tells Garfield, “Elmo’s going around Sesame Street checking in on everybody,” and asks, “So, Elmo wants to know how Andrew’s doing?” At first, Garfield says he's doing okay, but then he opens up about how much he's missing his mom that day.
“She passed away not too long ago, and you know, I just miss her. Miss her a lot,” the Amazing Spider-Man actor said in a heavy voice. To this, Elmo apologized to him, but Andrew said “It’s actually kind of OK to miss somebody.” He added, “That sadness is kind of a gift. It’s kind of a lovely thing to feel, in a way, because it means you really love somebody when you miss them. When I miss my mom, I remember all of the cuddles I used to get from her, all of the hugs I used to get from her. It makes me feel close to her when I miss her in a strange way.” In the end, he shared a sweet secret with the red monster, “You know, Elmo was my mummy’s favorite!” The muppet bobbed his head in excitement.
Shortly before he started filming the 2021 movie “Tick, Tick…Boom,” Andrew lost his mother, Lynn, in 2019 to pancreatic cancer. So while he filmed the movie, his intense grief poured into his character, making the performance more authentic. In his 2024 movie “We Live in Time,” his character wrangles in grief as his partner gets cancer.
His video encouraged X users to share their feelings. “Grief is love with nowhere to go. Andrew’s perspective on his mom is so heartwarming and relatable,” commented @miss__rhodes, while @lupeeexxo said, “When someone we love becomes a memory, those memories become treasures. Andrew’s words capture that perfectly.” Many people, who had lost their own moms, said, Andrew’s message hit them hard. The blue Cookie Monster reacted to the video with a blue heart emoji.
A week before this video came out, Andrew spoke about grieving the loss of his mom in an episode of The New York Times’ “Modern Love” podcast. He confessed that he felt “sad,” but he was not hopeless. “But the sadness is longing. It’s true longing, and there’s no shame in it,” the actor added. “And I can feel myself right now putting the modern conditioning taboo on this very, very pure feeling I’m having and expressing with you. And I find that sad.” He proclaimed that this “longing” is love.
Andrew Garfield attends the "We Live In Time" Headline Gala during the 68th BFI London Film Festival in London, England. (Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
In another recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, he shared that he likes to work on stories that allow him to express his deep emotions, rather than just those on the surface. “I want to offer something true and vulnerable. Because God, I don’t want to get highfalutin in any way, but we’re in trouble right now in our culture,” said Andrew. “There’s a kind of epidemic of meaninglessness permeating the culture in a way that is now undeniable. I don’t want to add to the din of numbness and a kind of toeing the capitalist line.”
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
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Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.