Andrew Garfield discusses mom's death with Elmo

Some emotions are so profound and universal that the best way to express them is to talk to a Muppet.

When Andrew Garfield stopped by Sesame Street this week, he and Elmo got into a surprisingly emotional conversation about how to cope with grief and how Garfield continues to mourn the loss of his mother, Lynn, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2019.

"It's actually kind of okay to miss somebody," Garfield said, through a few tears, while sitting on a Sesame Street stoop.

"It is?" Elmo responded. "Elmo always feels really sad when he misses somebody."

"Me too. But, you know, that sadness is kind of a gift," Garfield responded. "It's kind of a lovely thing to feel, in a way, because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them. 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... 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."

Garfield's mother may be gone, but Elmo was there to give the 41-year-old actor some cuddles as he spoke these emotional truths — especially after Garfield revealed that Elmo was his mom's favorite Muppet.

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The emotional conversation about love and loss feels relevant with the recent release of Garfield's new movie, We Live In Time . Directed by John Crowley (Brooklyn), the romantic drama stars Garfield and Florence Pugh as a star-crossed couple who experience both the joys and tragedies of a relationship over the course of a decade. The film is presented in a nonlinear format, which allowed the director and stars to cover a wider scope of time and emotions.

"It was fun dealing with the cause and effect of each event," Garfield told Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. "There was something with the script that really appealed to me in the sense of the mystery of one's life and this invisible golden thread between all of these different events that are seemingly so disjointed, but amount to a support for the idea of destiny."