“Here’s me,” Andrew Garfield says, gesturing towards a medieval watercolour of a lion. He leans over a display case containing a 14th-century book on the zodiac and starts to read aloud from its object label.
“Leo. Fire,” he says, listing off the ancient attributes of his astrological sign. “Hot and dry. Extroverted. Quick-tempered – told you. Ambitious – yes. These aren’t very nice qualities, I would say. Heart, back, spine – yes. Circulatory, heart problems – yes; well, I had meningitis when I was born.”
It is not quite a perfect fit, this description. But at 41, he will take it. In midlife, he has begun collecting any talisman he feels may instruct him in how to live.
He refers to them often in conversation: bits of poetry, quotations, scenes from films. And astrology too, of which he has a more than cursory understanding.
And yet it is a mere cosmic coincidence that “Rising Signs: The Medieval Science of Astrology” is currently on display at the Getty Centre in Los Angeles, where he has chosen to meet.
“Oh, s***, that’s kind of dope,” he says, looking over the list of exhibitions.