The actor says being force-fed school food made him unable to eat loose sweetcorn, despite loving corn on the cob.
Andrew Garfield has revealed that an embarrassing experience with school dinners left him with a lasting aversion to loose sweetcorn.
The 43-year-old actor opened up about the unusual food trauma during a recent appearance on the Dish podcast with Nick Grimshaw and chef Angela Hartnett.
Garfield recalled being force-fed school food by a teacher during his primary school years, an experience that ended with him vomiting on the teacher. He said he would also hide in the toilets to avoid eating his school lunches.
“It’s a pure, like visceral association with, I think… like I vomited on a teacher. Who force-fed me some of these things one day at school. I would hide in the toilet to not have to eat my primary school lunches,” Garfield explained.
“It was brutal.”
The experience appears to have stayed with the actor decades later, particularly when it comes to sweetcorn. Garfield said he enjoys corn on the cob, especially when it is covered in butter, but cannot tolerate corn once it has been removed from the cob.
“School dinners have f***** everyone up to a certain degree I think,” he remarked.
“So, I can’t have corn off the cob. On the cob is one thing. On the cob is actually one of my favourite things. With a lot of butter. Off the cob, I can’t do it.”
Garfield jokingly compared his school lunch experience to a form of torture, describing it as “a version of waterboarding but with like mashed potato and loose sweetcorn”.
The actor also spoke about his upcoming historical drama The Uprising, which is set during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
Meanwhile, Garfield is preparing to appear as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming film Artificial. The actor previously revealed to Variety that he spent “two to three months” watching and listening to footage of Altman while preparing to portray him.
Artificial is scheduled for a limited theatrical release in the United States on 25 December 2026, before expanding to a wider release in January 2027.