Kaitlyn Dever reveals how Andrew Garfield helped her through her late mother's illness

Kaitlyn Dever has revealed Andrew Garfield's openness about grief and loss helped her through her late mother's cancer battle.

During a 2021 interview with Stephen Colbert, The Amazing Spider-Man star spoke sincerely and emotionally about his late mother Lynne, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2019.

He vulnerably told Colbert about using art to heal from the loss and expressed hope that the grief stays with him because it's "all the unexpressed love" he has for her.

Dever told GQ Hype that she would watch that interview over and over again to help her get through her mother Kathy's 14-year battle with breast cancer. Kathy died in February 2024.

"I would google it and watch it often," Dever said, "because I always felt like... the worst thing in my life that could happen was losing my best friend. And I always thought that I wouldn't be able to go on. But then I'd look at Andrew and think, well, his life seems to be moving forwards."

Like Garfield, the 28-year-old has spoken openly and candidly about her grief while promoting The Last of Us season two this year, and she has been inundated with messages from people who felt the same way about her interviews as she did with Garfield's.

"It was special to hear a lot of feedback," she shared. "It felt really good to know someone feels the same way, and (knowing) someone can relate to how I feel makes me feel less alone."

Dever began filming The Last of Us three days after her mother's funeral. While she found the situation difficult at the time, she now understands what Garfield meant about art being "therapeutic".

She said of playing the grief-stricken Abby: "It was really hard, but I guess it shoved me into thinking about it more. If I had a few months in between these things, maybe I would have processed it differently. Maybe I would have shut it out more instead."