The actor Andrew Garfield, who is dating Emma Stone (confirmed: paparazzi spotted them at lunch this weekend—see for yourself), played the Amazing Spider-Man in the The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. Was this a fun and lucrative opportunity for Andrew Garfield? Only the second thing.

In an interview with Indiewire published yesterday, Andrew Garfield explained that playing the Amazing Spider-Man in the Amazing Spider-Man movies was hard.

The pressure to get it right, to please everyone… it’s not going to happen...You end up pleasing no one, or everyone just a little bit. Like, “Eh, that was good.” [The films are] mass-marketed, like “We want 50-year-old white men to love it, gay teenagers to love it, bigot homophobes in Middle America to love it, 11-year-old girls to love it.” That’s canning Coke.

And a bummer.

So that aspect of it was a bummer.

And, to be honest, like a prison.

Especially for the group of us trying to infuse it with soul, trying to make it unique, something that was worth the price of entry. It was about authenticity, flavor, and truth, but at the same time, I understand people want to make a lot of money, and they’re going to spend a lot of money so the playpen can be as big as it was. I can’t live that way; it sounds like a prison, to be honest, living within those expectations.

Damn. Knowing what he knows now about big-budget franchise films, would Andrew Garfield do it all again?

Of course!

I was well up for the challenge, and I still am. I’m not going to shy away from something that a lot of people are going to see. Fuck it, bring it on, life’s short.

There are pros and cons to everything.

h/t E! News. Photo via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.