Any visual likeness between Andrew Garfield and Sam Altman is, at best, a loose one. Drawing on his Oscar-nominated background, the actor set about finding an approach to embody the OpenAI chief executive at the centre of Luca Guadagnino's film Artificial.
Attempts to alter Garfield's appearance through prosthetics — so that he might more closely resemble Altman — never produced a workable result, a process Guadagnino described as "totally ridiculous." Garfield raised the episode with evident good humour when a television news crew put the question to him on the red carpet ahead of the film's premiere at the 2026 New York Film Festival.
Garfield described drawing on the Stanislavski method — a foundational acting framework in which a performer traces what other characters say about the role being played — rather than leaning on the digital tools central to the production. He explained that consulting people with direct knowledge of Altman — those who had encountered or spent time with him — was a deliberate effort to build a picture of the character from outside perspectives rather than relying on what the story itself presents about him. The performer described drawing in as much material as possible, allowing it to inform personal instinct, interpretation, and perspective in shaping the final result — a process that, he noted, would have taken a different form in anyone else's hands.
People tend to filter their accounts of events through personal experience, memory, and perception, making fully objective storytelling a rarity rather than a given.
Artificial charts both the founding story of OpenAI and the broader spread of artificial intelligence as a technology, with close attention paid to the prominent individuals who shaped its direction from within Silicon Valley. Preparing for their respective roles, the cast drew on archival materials and first-hand interviews with the individuals they portrayed.
Yura Borisov, cast as OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, took a different path, noting that a shared birthday of 8 December shaped his approach and led him toward a character built on personal connection rather than research-heavy preparation. Will Angus, who had previously appeared in Not Suitable for Work, brought Anthropic co-founder and former OpenAI researcher Dario Amodei to the screen at a stage when Amodei had not yet become a widely recognised public figure. Angus told a news outlet that encountering the executive at that earlier point carried its own reward, that the production treated the portrayal with care, and that Amodei's stated commitment to keeping AI development oriented toward human benefit made the part appealing.
That portrayal sits alongside Amodei's documented public positions, which have included calls for federal oversight of the technology and for the industry to moderate its pace of development until safety frameworks are sufficiently in place. Asked whether Amodei's stated concerns about AI safety ring true to him, Angus offered a measured response, expressing a degree of hope that Amodei is working toward keeping AI aligned with human goals, while noting that he cannot say for certain.
Neon — which stepped in to distribute the film after Amazon MGM Studios dropped the near-finished project in June — has set a Christmas Day opening for the picture. The script, written by Saturday Night Live graduate Simon Rich, features Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, Monica Barbaro as OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, alongside Cooper Hoffman, Mark Rylance, Will Price, Chris O'Dowd, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Koch, Thaddea Graham, Nicholas Hamilton, and Angus Imrie.
