Published Oct 21, 2024

Jessica Chastain Rearranged Her Filming Schedule To Help ‘Spider-Man’ Actor Andrew Garfield, 41, So He Could Be There For Mom Fighting Pancreatic Cancer– Moments That Matter

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Andrew Garfield On Missing His Mom & Coping With Grief

Actor Andrew Garfield, 41, who lost his mother Lynn to pancreatic cancer five years ago, has admitted it’s ok to be miss a loved one and “celebrate” them at the same time. He spoke with Elmo on a recent “Sesame Street” segment about coping with emotions after the loss of a loved one.
Grief is a difficult, truly personal process, something Garfield has shown. Some find solace in vulnerability and sharing how they feel with others.
While working through grief and vulnerable tackling of the emotions that accompany it, some find tools like therapy to be helpful. Support groups can also be a benefit for those who are feeling isolated in their feelings of grief. Faith can also be a powerful coping mechanism for some.
Whichever methods of support you look for after cancer loss, you should know that there is no correct way to grieve. There is no perfect timeline for grieving, either.
Pancreatic cancer is a type of cancer that forms in the pancreas. It is more challenging to treat because symptoms usually don’t present themselves until the cancer has spread or metastasized. Symptoms may include weight gain, back pain, and jaundice.
Treatment options for pancreatic cancer may include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy.

Showing up for loved ones and colleagues matters. When someone in your life has a loved one who is sick, in many cases they’ll remember in cherish how the people around them acted.

It’s been five years since the “The Amazing Spider Man” actor Andrew Garfield lost his mom to pancreatic cancer—and despite the overwhelming emotions he has felt since her passing, the 41-year-old movie star has admitted he understands it’s possible to “celebrate” and “miss” his beloved mom at the same time.

Speaking to Elmo in a video clip from “Sesame Street,” footage which has popularly been shared on various media platforms this month, Garfield addressed his mom’s passing and acknowledged the emotions his been feeling since losing her.

In response to Elmo’s inquiry on how Garfield is doing, the actor, who also stars in the film directed by Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda called “Tick, Tick… Boom!” expressed how grateful he was to speak with the iconic muppet character.

Before going into detail about his emotions, Garfield asked Elmo if he was willing to listen to what he was going through, the actor said, “I’m just thinking about my mum today.

“You know, she passed away not too long ago, and I just miss her. I miss her a lot.”

Garfield explained, Sadness is kind of a gift. It’s kind of a lovely thing to feel in a way because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them.”

Elmo is here to listen. Elmo loves you, Mr. Andrew Garfield! ❤️ #EmotionalWellBeing pic.twitter.com/rW86tR5Gof
— Elmo (@elmo) October 18, 2024

He said. “When I miss my mom, I remember all of the cuddles I used to get from her, all the hugs I used to get from her, and it makes me feel close to her, in a strange way.

“So, I’m happy to have all of the memories of my mum and the joy she brought me, and the joy she brought my brother and my dad and everyone she ever met … everyone around her.”

“When I miss her, I remember it’s because she made me so happy. So I can celebrate her and I can miss her at the same time,” he concluded.

Garfield also spoke about how actress and “Eyes of Tammy Faye” costar Jessica Chastain helped him prior to his mom’s passing, during a recent interview with People.

He told People, “What was amazing was that [Searchlight Pictures’ David Greenbaum] and Jessica rearranged the schedule last-minute, put filming on hold [in North Carolina] for a few days so that I could go back [to England] and be with my mom for 10 days.”

Noting how another costar, actor Vincent D’Onofrio, also helped him, he added, “Because he had his own experience with a loss that he wasn’t able to make it back for, he said, ‘Go. You got to go.’

“And I was like, ‘Well, I know I’ve got to go, and thank you.'”

Garfield, who is now starring in the new romance/comedy film “We Live in Time, which was released earlier this month,

In an earlier interview with Variety, highlighting how to cope when losing a loved one to cancer, Garfield revealed his learned of his mom’s diagnosis prior to accepting his role in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

He described his mom Lynn Garfield as “the purest angel,” and recounting not wanting to leave his mom while filming “Tammy Faye,” but his mom wanted to keep working.

“She said, ‘I would struggle with you not doing it on account of me.’ I told her, ‘OK, but promise me when it’s time to come home you’ll let me know,'” Garfield told the news outlet.

However, in late 2019, Garfield went back to England [as he was filming the movie in North Carolina] to be with his mother during her final weeks.

“The good news about me and her is that we left nothing unsaid,” he explained. “We had all the quality time we could possibly have while she was here; and those last two weeks I got to be with her were probably the most profound two weeks of my life. To be with her and my dad and my brother, all of her friends, my nephews. It was full of grace in the midst of the terrible tragedy.”

Coping After The Loss of a Loved One

It’s important to remember that grief may look different for everyone—and the stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These labels help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. These stages can also occur in any order.

The time it takes to navigate these stages can also vary, so giving yourself grace and patience is essential while navigating your feelings.

WATCH: Dealing With Grief Related to Health Problems

“It often gets better over time, but on certain days, it can look like depression, and on other days, people look perfectly normal and can function,” Dr. Scott Irwin, a board-certified psychiatrist and Director of Supportive Care Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet.

Dr. Irwin added that grieving people are coming to terms with “the change in their life; the future they had imagined is now different.”

SurvivorNet spoke with Megan Newcomer, who lost a close friend to metastatic cancer in 2018. She shared her unique way of coping with grief. Her friend was an athlete and soccer player, so to help her cope, she embarked on a marathon race in his honor.

Newcomer advises others grieving to first “acknowledge your feelings.”

“Then, think about a way that you could honor the person through a mechanism that is meaningful to you. So that can be artwork, music, or developing a financial fundraising project. It could be something very simple, but I do think having it be intentional is what you’re doing to help honor this person,” Newcomer adds.

In a column for SurvivorNet, New York-based clinical psychologist Dr. Marianna Strongin wrote that it may be helpful to remind yourself that these feelings are “meaningful yet temporary.”

“If you approach them with compassion, kindness, and eventually acceptance, you will come away from this period in your life more connected to your resilience and strength,” she wrote.

Finding a Therapist That’s Right For You

Learning about Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease that is difficult to detect because symptoms, including jaundice and weight loss, typically present at a later stage in the cancer’s development. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Dr. Anirban Maitra, the co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains what he typically sees when patients develop this disease.

“Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen often doesn’t have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas,” he says. “By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain or diabetes, it’s often very late in the stage of the disease.”

Detecting Pancreatic Cancer Early Is Crucial

Parents, siblings and children of someone with pancreatic cancer are considered high risk for developing the disease because they are first-degree relatives of the individual. PGVs (pathogenic germline variants) are changes in reproductive cells (sperm or egg) that become part of the DNA in the cells of the offspring. Germline variants are passed from parents to their children, and are associated with increased risks of several cancer types, including pancreatic, ovarian and breast cancers. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11 and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer.

Jessica Everett, a genetic counselor at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, encourages people in this category to look into possible screening options.

“If you’re concerned about pancreatic cancer in your family, start by talking to a genetic counselor to learn more about your risk and what options you have,” Everett said.

In addition, note that up to ten percent of pancreatic cancer cases are caused by inherited genetic syndromes. So, if two or more members of your family have had pancreatic cancer, or if you have pancreatic cysts, it’s worth asking your doctor to check for pancreatic cancer since you’re at high risk.

Progress in Pancreatic Cancer

Progress has been made over the last few years in the world of pancreatic cancer treatments. One clinical trial recently found that the drug Onivyde, in combination with chemotherapy in the so-called Nalirifox regimen, helped patients live longer compared with chemotherapy in previously untreated patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC), according to Ipsen, the pharmaceutical company that bought the drug.

“The prognosis for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is extremely poor and we plan to submit these new findings to the regulatory authority as, if approved, we believe this regimen could offer up an important new treatment option for people living with an aggressive and hard-to-treat cancer,” Howard Mayer, Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development for Ipsen, said. “We thank the patients who participated in the study, their families and their healthcare teams.”

The drug is currently approved in the U.S., Europe, and Asia in combination with fluorouracil and leucovorin as a treatment for mPDAC after disease progression and following gemcitabine-based therapy.

Another example of progress being made comes in the form of immunotherapy, a type of cancer treatment that uses your own immune system to fight cancer.

“Up until now, immunotherapy hasn’t had a big role,” Dr. Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet.

Dr. Allyson Ocean explains why pancreatic cancer is so hard to treat.

A clinical trial led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and sponsored by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, found “combination of chemotherapy with an immunotherapy meant to unleash the anticancer capacity of the immune system was effective against one of the hardest targets in cancer care, pancreatic cancer,” said Penn Medicine.

“The researchers found that in 34 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer randomized to receive the immunotherapy nivolumab with two chemotherapy drugs, nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine, had a one-year survival rate of 57.7 percent, significantly greater than the historical average of 35 percent with chemotherapy alone,” the institution said.

Dr. Benjamin Musher, the director of medical oncology at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, recently said there were currently multiple “home-grown clinical trials testing novel immunotherapies in all stages of pancreatic cancer studies underway at Baylor St. Luke’s.” But only about 5 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer participate in such studies.

“We know that we are not going to improve outcomes without more patients enrolling,” Musher said.

In addition, there are immunotherapy clinical trial innovations being made to allow for multiple immunotherapeutic approaches to be tested and compared to one or several standard-of-care options within trials. In other words, “investigational treatments can be added or dropped from the trial over time, depending on preclinical and clinical evidence.”

“We’re encouraged by the trend toward more innovative clinical trial designs to improve the drug development process and ultimately lead to better patient outcomes,” PanCAN Chief Science Officer Lynn Matrisian said in a recent article from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Clinical trials, in general, are research studies that compare the most effective known treatment for a specific type or stage of a disease with a new approach.

Dr. Beth Karlan, a gynecologic oncologist with UCLA Health, previously told SurvivorNet that clinical trials can play an important role for some patients’ treatment, but they also serve a larger purpose.

“Clinical trials hopefully can benefit you, but it’s also providing very, very vital information to the whole scientific community about the effectiveness of these treatments,” Dr. Karlan said. “We need everyone to be partners with us if we’re ever going to truly cure cancer or prevent people from having to die from cancer.”

That being said, there is no guarantee you’ll receive more effective treatment than the standard of care, and clinical trials certainly aren’t right for everyone. You should always talk with your doctor(s) before getting involved in one. Some risks to consider are:

The risk of harm and/or side effects due to experimental treatments
Researchers may be unaware of some potential side effects for experimental treatments
The treatment may not work for you, even if it has worked for others

But if you’ve already decided that a clinical trial is right for you or you’re just beginning to explore your treatment options, you should know that SurvivorNet has a tool for you. The SurvivorNet Clinical Trial Finder: an A.I. driven tool for patients to find clinical trial options for treatment.

The tool is built on top of clinicaltrials.gov, a database maintained by the U.S. government that compiles privately and publicly funded clinical trials conducted around the world, and gives access to more than 100,000+ individual clinical trials, updated daily.

“Clinical trials are critical to the development of new therapies, and as we live through this extraordinary revolution in genomics, immunotherapy and targeted therapy, it’s clear that one of the most pressing needs for patients, clinical trials sponsors, and researchers is simply a better way to find patients,” SurvivorNet CEO Steve Alperin said.

“Even one percent more people successfully enrolled in clinical trials can change the world.”