Andrew Garfield Suggests Sam Altman “Lies” at Artificial Premiere

If Sam Altman’s nose grew every time he bent the truth, Andrew Garfield thinks he’d be looking at a very long nose indeed.

At the world premiere of “Artificial” at the New York Film Festival on Monday, Garfield played a version of the OpenAI CEO — and he didn’t hold back when asked about Altman’s own account of the shoot. “I feel like we need to shine the light as bright as possible on the nooks and crannies of the people that we’re giving all of our autonomy and power to,” Garfield told the crowd. He suggested Altman has a habit of telling fibs.

Altman had told Vanity Fair that he saw Garfield shooting the film outside his Bay Area home and that they waved. “If that happened, I must have blacked out,” Garfield said. He confirmed they filmed on Altman’s street but insisted, “we didn’t see him at all that day we were shooting.”

Garfield spent two to three months studying Altman, watching footage daily and nailing his gait — which Altman himself admitted to Vanity Fair was accurate — and his vocal fry. The actor admitted he was initially impressed when he saw Altman testifying before Congress. “I was like, Dang, this guy’s great,” Garfield recounted. “He’s clear-eyed, he’s honest, he’s transparent. But then you learn more about a person…” He paused. “Here we are.”

Director Luca Guadagnino’s satire traces OpenAI’s journey from idealistic nonprofit to profit-driven behemoth. The cast includes Cooper Hoffman as Greg Brockman, Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, and Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever. Borisov, who plays a morally conflicted co-founder, said he was nervous for the real Sutskever to see the film. “It’s just like a child, just born. You’re waiting for it to start breathing,” he said.

The film was dropped by Amazon earlier this year after the studio’s planned $50 billion investment in OpenAI. Vanity Fair reported that Neon acquired it with no upfront payment but committed $15 million to marketing ahead of a Christmas Day release. Guadagnino told THR that “zero-AI” was used in the film’s production.

“It’s not ‘how could this thing go wrong.’ It’s how could it not?”

Screenwriter Simon Rich said he’d been trying to warn people about AI dangers for years. “About a year before ChatGPT was released, he showed us stuff on his computer that was so terrifying that I felt the urge to warn people,” Rich said. The film added a closing card addressing concerns from former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon, who resigned in 2026 saying neither OpenAI nor Anthropic can develop AI responsibly.

Garfield called the shoot “a living document” shaped by daily news. “One of us would bring in a news story like, ‘Yo, how are we going to include this now?’” he said. “Now there’s a shit-ton more on public record.”

When the film goes wide on Christmas Day, audiences may find the real lead is Borisov’s Sutskeyer. Neon announced Borisov will campaign in the lead actor category for Oscars, with Garfield in supporting alongside Mark Rylance and Monica Barbaro.

Guadagnino explained why he made the film. “As much as AI belongs to a world of mathematics, it’s still generated by people,” he said. “This is a deep exploration of the interaction between people where there is a total lack of desire, but there is a complete desire to prevail.”

• Andrew Garfield
• Artificial
• Luca Guadagnino
• New York Film Festival
• OpenAI
• Sam Altman