In Artificial by Luca Guadagnino, scheduled for US release by the end of the year, Andrew Garfield plays Sam Altman, the CEO of the tech behemoth OpenAI, the father of the Artificial Intelligence that is changing the world. In an interview with Esquire, the actor explained with what attitude he approached a difficult role, not only because of the scale of the character and his ambiguities, but also because every interpretation heard carries within it an honest reading of the interior life of every actor…
[Photo of Sam Altman courtesy of Steve Jurvetson, from Wikimedia Commons]
Andrew Garfield troubled by the interpretation of Sam Altman in Artificial
Sam Altman, the controversial CEO of OpenAI, cradle of that ChatGPT that has changed the world, in Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial is portrayed by Andrew Garfield, who shares the screen with Monica Barbaro, Yura Borisov, Mark Rylance and Jason Schwartzman. What effect does a real-life figure of this kind have, with what heart do you approach him? “To be clear, I do not know Sam Altman, never met him. I based it on the script, on the transcripts of the proceedings and on the interviews; we were telling a story. But I believe that anyone who accepts that level of responsibility for a company or a technology that already knows it will cause a lot of damage to the soul of humanity must have a certain ability to dissociate. […] There is something I need to integrate drawing from myself, but I’m afraid. […] Then you ask yourself: ‘If we were all less ready to condemn, less “those aren’t us,” perhaps Donald Trump would not have been elected twice, and Nigel Farage would not even be close to a position of power. Instead, if we asked: “Interesting, where am I in this cowardly pig, aspiring fascist, cheater, opportunist, power-hungry and unethical?” We know how to identify that bad part of us. We know it well.“
The film was supposed to be distributed by Amazon MGM Studios who produced it, but when Bezos’s company struck a $50 billion deal with OpenAI, it dropped it to keep the peace. In the United States Artificial will be released under the Neon label, after Netflix, A24 and Focus Features declined.
Comments