Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh had been wanting to work together for years before they starred alongside each other in We Live in Time.

In the romance drama, the British actors play an up-and-coming chef and a recent divorcée who find their lives forever changed when a chance encounter brings them together.

Garfield, who was attached to the project first, revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Pugh was at the top of his list of co-stars because he’d admired her performances from afar for years.

“I had been a long admirer of her work, since Lady Macbeth,” he shared. “When John (Crowley, director) and I were talking about ideas for Almut (Pugh’s character) – because I came on first – Florence was top of the list. I’d been wanting to work with her for a long time, and it turned out she had also wanted to work with me, and it was fortuitous that our schedules matched up. And she was dying to make a film like this as well.”

Garfield noted that their “mutual respect” might not have paid off on-screen, however, he found it very easy to go to “intimate places” with the Dune: Part Two star.

“At one point, I have to have my head right by her backside while she’s on all fours in a petrol station, naked. That’s scary for anyone to do, let alone the woman in that scenario. And that’s just one example of the kind of the intimacy that we would have to feel safe going to with each other. And it wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t feel safe,” he explained.

“It was very, very easy to do that with Florence, and I think she would say the same with me. I’m so grateful for that, because I don’t think we would have a film that works without that.”

We Live in Time will be released in U.K. cinemas on 1 January.

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