Palestinian leader says unified government will recognize Israel

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Seeking to calm critics of his reconciliation efforts with the militant Hamas group, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday the unity government he plans to head will renounce violence and recognize Israel.

Abbas, who rules in the West Bank, and Hamas, the fundamentalist Islamic movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip after ousting Abbas' forces in a brief armed battle in June 2007, reached an agreement on Thursday to reconcile their differences.

Israel strongly criticized the new pact and said it would not negotiate with a Palestinian government that included Hamas, which it and others consider a terrorist organization. The U.S. said it would talk with the new government only if it recognized Israel, renounced violence and accepted agreements reached with Israel.

Abbas criticized the Israeli position, saying that when there was a division between his backers and Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used to say that Abbas does not represent all Palestinians. And now that the West Bank and Gaza are about to reunite, Netanyahu says he will not negotiate with Abbas because he is working with Hamas.

Nevertheless, in a bid to assure Israeli and U.S. leaders, Abbas said at the opening session of a two-day meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Central Council here that even though the new unity government will have nothing to do with negotiations, it will follow his own political platform.

"I recognize Israel and it [the new government] will recognize Israel," he told the 120-strong Central Council, the PLO's second highest legislative body.

"I reject violence and terrorism and the government will also reject violence and terrorism, and I recognize international legality and international commitments and the government will be committed to what I am committed to," he said. "No one can claim that this will be a government of extremists."

International officials who met with Abbas in the last few days said he assured them of the same thing.

Robert Serry, special United Nations coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement after meeting Abbas on Thursday that he was assured that the agreement with Hamas would be implemented under the leadership of Abbas and the PLO.

"President Abbas emphasized that these commitments include recognition of Israel, nonviolence and adherence to previous agreements," said Serry, who added that the United Nations continues to support Palestinian unity "on this basis as the only way to reunite the West Bank and Gaza under one legitimate Palestinian Authority."

Abbas noted that the new government would be composed of "independent technocrats," meaning it would not include any person from Hamas or even his Fatah party, and that its mission would be to run the daily affairs of the Palestinian territories and prepare for the long overdue presidential and legislative elections.

He said current Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah had told Abbas that he would resign as soon as the unity government was formed.

Negotiations with Israel, said Abbas, "are the job of the PLO because it represents the Palestinian people everywhere and has the authority to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people."

In addition to being president of the Palestinian Authority and head of the Fatah movement, Abbas has also served as chairman of the PLO since the death of its former leader, Yasser Arafat, in 2004.

The agreement with Hamas, whose Central Council members have nevertheless boycotted the Ramallah meeting in spite of the reconciliation steps, along with the crisis in the negotiations with Israel are among the items the Palestinian body will discuss in its meeting.

Abbas said he was ready to extend negotiations with Israel, which officially end in three days, by three months if Israel would release the last group of long-detained Palestinian prisoners it had said it would set free when the talks started in July, freeze all settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and present a map showing the borders of the Palestinian state.

He said that without the three things, there would be no more negotiations.

President Obama said on Friday that there would be "a pause" in the negotiations until the parties came up with alternatives to salvage them.

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Abukhater is a special correspondent

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Egypt reports its first MERS case; virus kills 92 in Saudi Arabia

A woman wears a mask as she leaves a hospital Wednesday in the Red Sea coastal city of Jidda, Saudi Arabia. ( AFP/Getty Images / April 22, 2014)

By Laura King

April 26, 2014, 8:43 a.m.

CAIRO – Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has come to Egypt.

State television said Saturday that the country's first case had been discovered. It said the patient, who was hospitalized in Cairo, had recently traveled to Saudi Arabia, where the virus was first identified.

Saudi Arabia had announced hours earlier that the death toll in the kingdom had reached 92. In addition, an Indonesian man who had traveled to Saudi Arabia died Friday after returning home, and the virus has been found elsewhere in the Middle East, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

MERS is a coronavirus similar to that which causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, discovered in Asia more than a decade ago. But the new virus is deadlier than SARS, killing about one in three of those who fall ill. Its hallmarks are flu-like symptoms including fever and coughing. Sometimes it develops into pneumonia.

Even before Saturday's announcement, Egypt's health ministry had said it was probable that MERS had spread to Egypt, because it had been found in a small sampling of camels. The animals are thought to be a vector of the virus.

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laura.king@latimes.com

@laurakingLAT

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Brazil targets sex tourism before the World Cup

Reporting from Natal, Brazil—

Between a cluster of bars in this small coastal town, middle-aged European men hover around dozens of fresh-faced Brazilian women in tight dresses.

Around the corner, two girls who look to be in their teens flag down cars, signaling their availability to potential clients.

Most such activity, however, seems confined to a small, seedy tourist strip, the last gasp of a bygone era.

Natal, long known as a hot spot for sex tourism, has seen fewer problems in the wake of a national economic boom and concerted government efforts to cut back on the Carnaval nation's carnal image.

But with the World Cup on its way and Natal set to host a match between the United States and Ghana on June 16, the issue of travelers coming to town to find cheap — and often underage — sexual partners is again the center of public attention.

"Just five, 10 years ago, Natal used to receive 30 chartered flights — full of men — every weekend," said City Council member Julia Arruda, who serves on a commission to combat the sexual exploitation of children. "Things are much better now. But people are still taking advantage of our mostly young, impoverished citizens, and we know that there have also been networks of child prostitution for tourists.... That's why there have been coordinated projects between the 12 World Cup host cities."

The government has closed down sex hotels and supported nongovernmental organizations that work with at-risk children, and it launched a national campaign during this year's Carnaval encouraging citizens to report cases of sexual or child abuse. It has also done battle with major brands over depictions of Brazil.

This year, sportswear company Adidas launched two World Cup-themed shirts with jokes implying that visitors would come to Brazil in search of erotic, as well as sport-related, entertainment. One featured a bikini-clad woman and a soccer ball. "Lookin' to score. Brazil," it read. The other included a heart in the form of an inverted female posterior.

The response from the government was swift. The Tourism Ministry said it "vehemently repudiated" products that link Brazil to sex, and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's first female president, took to Twitter, declaring "Brazil is happy to receive the tourists that will arrive for the World Cup, but is also ready to combat sexual tourism."

Adidas quickly recalled the shirts, but the incident cast a renewed focus on long-standing stereotypes.

Brazilians complain that stereotypical images lead to prejudice and unwanted advances when they are traveling abroad.

"First, they say that I don't 'look Brazilian,' because I don't have big breasts or a big" rear end, says Alexa Santoro, a 23-year old student from Sao Paulo who is training to be a funeral makeup artist. "Then, the abuse starts. They think that I'll just jump into bed with them, since that's how they think things work in Brazil.... It can really make you feel bad."

Santoro says she was not encouraged by reports that prostitutes around the country were taking English lessons before the World Cup.

The image has contributed to the flow of sex tourists most, visible in beach cities like Natal and Fortaleza, in the poorer northeastern region of the country. At times, the trade has relied on local networks that trafficked in children, authorities say.

Along with countries such as Thailand, Brazil has historically had a problem with sex tourism, though the United Nations says that quantitative comparisons between countries are difficult. In Brazil, 18,000 calls were made to a government sexual exploitation hotline in 2012, says Angelica Goulart, national secretary for the promotion of the rights of children and adolescents.

"It's not that previous governments actually promoted that kind of behavior," she says, "but they weren't attentive enough to the way Brazil was being sold ... we're now investing a lot of time and effort into breaking that image."

Goulart says calls to the hotline have increased in recent years, indicating what she believes is less tolerance of abuse.

In Natal, the fight against sex tourism has involved getting hotels and travel agencies to sign codes of conduct, providing support for educational programs that work with at-risk youths and a crackdown in the tourist quarter.

Other spots known for prostitution have closed down, and the last visible bastions of sex tourism function as nothing more than "meeting points," where patrons talk and sometimes arrange to leave together, making legal action difficult.

Beyond the bars are the beaches and shopping malls, where potential clients and exploited girls — (and boys — can meet. Pimps who exploit the prostitutes are often not present in these places, making a crackdown on them more difficult.

"There is prostitution, and then there is exploitation," says Arruda, the City Council member. "The challenge is great, and the progress has been slower than we'd like, but we have to do everything we can to stamp out exploitation."

Bevins is a special correspondent.

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In landlocked Sun Valley, a small ship is taking shape

He grew up on the sea. So maybe it's only natural that Dillon Griffith still has some salt water in his blood.

Which would help explain why the 82-year-old retired heavy-duty mechanic has spent the last 37 years — miles from the ocean — meticulously assembling a 64-foot boat in the backyard of his Sun Valley home.

"The Mystic Rose" has slowly taken shape on quiet Arminta Street, a project so ambitious that it has passed through the generations with his children, in-laws, grandchildren and great-grandchildren lending a hand along the way.

When the boat is finally ready for its christening — by August or September, he hopes — it will take a 32-wheel trailer and a CHP escort just to get it to the water.

"People are already calling up to charter it," Griffith marveled.

Griffith plans to launch the boat in Oxnard after a boatyard puts a special coating of paint on its hull and reattaches the wheelhouse, which will have to be removed so the 40-ton boat can clear overhead wires and bridges as it rolls to the ocean.

Griffith was born on the island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where the Caribbean and Atlantic meet. As a young man, he sailed a 75-foot island-hopping cargo schooner around the Caribbean before coming to the U.S. in 1967.

Once in America, Griffith purchased a 40-foot fishing charter boat that he kept at the 22nd Street Landing in San Pedro.

"I finally decided it was just too small," he said.

When Griffith set his sails on building a larger boat, he and his wife concluded that their home in Arleta didn't have a large enough yard to accommodate his king-size plans. They snapped up the Sun Valley property when they discovered its house was large enough to accommodate the pair's eight children and its half-acre lot was big enough for his dream boat.

Griffith hired Seattle shipbuilder Ed Monk & Son to draw up plans for his steel-hulled craft and built his own dry dock out of heavy-duty piping. He started building the boat in 1977, working from the keel up.

Early on, Griffith and his family traveled to Montreal to purchase a battered, rusty 1955 Dodge truck with a small crane attached to it to lift the hull's steel plates into place for welding. "It took 11 days to drive that truck back here," he said.

Later, when the twin 600-horsepower marine engines were hoisted into the rear of the vessel to power its two propellers, a larger crane had to be rented. Two generators have also been installed to provide electricity for lights, refrigeration and navigation equipment.

"I couldn't believe he could do it. Many times I thought he would just quit," said his wife, Christine. "But I told him there was no way he's going to drop this now, in the middle of the project."

There were setbacks along the way, of course. The U.S. Coast Guard visited the backyard on numerous occasions to inspect Griffith's work. Once, Coast Guard inspectors made him rip out the boat's internal walls so they could inspect his structural welding.

Over the decades, everyone in Griffith's growing family ended up lending a hand — new sons-in-law and many of his 54 grandchildren and great-grandchildren chipped in.

"Everybody in the family has been involved with this," said daughter Kim Griffith, 48.

Patricia Bezart, a 32-year-old granddaughter, said she's proud of the family's role. "How many people can say their grandfather built a boat in the backyard?" Bezart asked.

But even with the free labor, Griffith estimates he has spent $1 million of his own money on the boat.

"And I'm not done yet," he said, noting it will cost another $50,000 to truck the Mystic Rose to the sea.

The finished vessel will sleep 25 people on fishing excursions and will have a refrigerated hold large enough to handle 10 tons of fish. It will require a certified skipper to operate it.

"Police and firemen have come by to climb aboard and watch me work," Griffith said. "Everyone in the neighborhood has been watching the boat being built."

Next-door neighbor Carmen Iniguez said she hopes to travel to Ventura County for the launching, which will feature a Caribbean-style steel band.

"I've been watching Grandpa build this boat since 1983," she said, employing the affectionate nickname those in the neighborhood call Griffith.

"I'd like to be there when he finally puts it in the water."

bob.pool@latimes.com

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'Unedited! The LAPD Photo Archives': An inside look at the exhibition

The photographer's will is felt here more than in other images from the same scene, Julien Frydman said, with an eye trained "to create the structure of the image. It's a funny image: You can look at it upside down, you can look at it in reverse, and it still has same impact." (LAPD / Fototeka / Paris Photo Los / March 12, 2014)

By Craig Nakano

April 26, 2014, 9:00 a.m.

To Julien Frydman, a new exhibition of decades-old Los Angeles Police Department crime scene photos is not so much a collection of facts in black and white but rather one big ambiguous storm of gray, a trove of stories where truth isn't a neat circle but rather a shape-shifting cloud open to interpretation.

Co-curated by Frydman with Robin Blackman and Merrick Morton of L.A.-based fototeka, "Unedited! The LAPD Photo Archives" includes more than 80 forensic images taken from the 1920s to 1960s, culled from more than 1 million pictures archived at the City Records Center downtown. The exhibition is one of the draws at the Paris Photo fair, running April 25-27 in Hollywood.

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Frydman, also director of the fair, said his "Unedited" selections are not just simple illustrations of crime scenes but rather complex stories, in some cases images in which the police photographer is clearly working to go beyond mere documentation. "You don't know if it's real life or film still," Frydman said: "They have a strong narrative, beautiful aesthetic, multiple layers of perfection."

The photos also take on new meaning given the setting of Paris Photo — the Paramount Pictures studio lot, with more than 80 exhibitors, artist signings and conversations with curators taking place amid sound stages, fake streets and other forms of the unreal real, Frydman said. "You are in between fiction and reality, which has a lot of to do with photography."

More details of the event can be found at http://www.parisphoto.com/losangeles.

craig.nakano@latimes.com

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'Edge of Tomorrow': Emily Blunt talks Tom Cruise, brutal sci-fi battle

For the cast, crew and a platoon of weary extras shooting the 3-D sci-fi extravaganza "Edge of Tomorrow" at England's Leavesden Studios in late 2012, the beach set became synonymous with suffering.

Built to recall such World War II coastal conflicts as the Invasion of Normandy or the Battle of Dunkirk, the sandy set proved to be as loathsome as the brutal alien marauders known as "mimics" that star Tom Cruise battles while wearing an 85-pound metal exoskeleton in the film (which reportedly cost between $175 million and $200 million and is due in theaters June 6).

"That beach became known by everyone working as 'the Bitch,'" said "Edge of Tomorrow" costar Emily Blunt. "It was England. It was cold. The sand was so cumbersome. There were explosions. And everyone was running around in the metal suits. It became like this six-week mission to just get through the beach set."

"Edge of Tomorrow" is based on the Japanese young adult novella "All You Need Is Kill." Director Doug Liman grafts "Transformers"-like robot shoot-'em-up action onto a gritty wartime drama a la "Saving Private Ryan" with a strong narrative debt to 1993's time-warp comedy "Groundhog Day."

Cruise's character, Lt. Col. Bill Cage, finds himself stuck in a "time loop," thrown wholly unprepared into a brutal combat scenario in which he's killed repeatedly, only to find himself inexplicably resurrected anew after each death to fight the same beach-set battle again.

Blunt portrays a legendary Special Forces soldier who killed 1,000 mimics in a single shootout and now serves as mentor to Cruise's bewildered hero as the Doomsday Clock on Earth's invasion ticks toward zero.

"She had the same power that Tom's character now has," Blunt explained. "She really is the only person on the planet who understands what he's going through. She no longer has that power but sees he's the key to winning the war."

For her part, Blunt — known for portraying an evil fashionista in 2006's "The Devil Wears Prada" and starring in indie fare such as "The Adjustment Bureau" and "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" — went on a three-month crash course in Krav Maga, track running and gymnastics to meet the physical challenges of acting and fighting in metal battle armor while strung up on aerial wires.

"I almost broke my nose in training," Blunt said, laughing at the memory. "I caught my sword on the wire. That was the only part where I was like, 'I won't be able to shoot tomorrow!'"

– Chris Lee | @LATHeroComplex

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Ansel Elgort sails into deep Waters with 'Fault in Our Stars'

Having already gone through the social media wringer when he was cast in the young-adult franchise "Divergent," Ansel Elgort thought he had a pretty good idea about how passionate and protective readers can be about their favorite books. Then he won the role of Augustus Waters, the love interest in the movie adaptation of John Green's bestselling romance "The Fault in Our Stars," and the 20-year-old actor realized he had crossed into an uncharted realm.

For the first few hours after the news broke last May, Elgort's Twitter following mushroomed, and many of the newcomers weren't shy about sharing their opinion about his casting.

"I was on my phone nonstop, refreshing Twitter and reading all these aggressive comments," Elgort remembers. "'Who the ... is this guy?' 'He's not Augustus Waters!' 'He's not what he looks like at all! His eyes aren't even blue!'"

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They are, in fact, hazel. And Elgort's hair is light brown, not dark, as described in the book. But judging from fans' enthusiastic reaction to an early screening of the movie (which arrives in theaters June 6), those surface distinctions will be quickly forgotten. As Green puts it: "Augustus was going to be the hardest character to cast. And I think once people see Ansel, they'll realize there are more important things than the color of his eyes."

At the beginning of "The Fault in Our Stars," Augustus meets Hazel Grace Lancaster, the story's 16-year-old narrator, at a cancer support group meeting. She doesn't want to be there but then notices this "lean and muscular" older boy with a crooked smile staring at her, making her "rather blushy." Afterward, she notices him looking at her again and asks him why.

"Because you're beautiful," he answers. "I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence."

That's when the swooning starts (with the tears soon to follow), as the melancholy and often funny "Fault" follows the evolving relationship between the cancer-stricken teens looking to love and live deeply and understand what it means to leave a mark on the world.

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The movie reunites the 6-foot-4 (and, yes, lean and muscular) Elgort with Shailene Woodley, who plays Hazel. The pair played siblings in "Divergent" this year, though both had read for "Fault" well before they were cast in that film. Woodley signed first. When she learned Elgort would be screen testing opposite her, she told him to read the book — or face her wrath.

"I was like, 'I gotta read this ... book,'" says Elgort, who, for all his artistic inclinations (he is a dancer and musician), isn't much of a reader. "And I read it like a mad man. And I cried a lot, and it really hit me hard."

It also gave him the ability to improvise when he read with Woodley, adding information from the book (Augustus likening Hazel to a young Natalie Portman) that threw Woodley off a bit.

"Supposedly she dominated the other guys in the audition, and I was the only guy able to dominate her a little bit," Elgort says. "And it was all because she made me read the book. And the main reason I read it is that I knew Shailene would ask me — in front of everyone — the second I walked in the room whether I read it. And there's no way I could lie to her face."

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That anecdote, with its mix of strength and vulnerability, captures as much as anything Elgort's appeal for the filmmakers. Director Josh Boone says Elgort possesses an almost "magical purity," while author Green puts it more plainly.

"A lot of guys that came in knew how to play cool Gus," Green says, "but very few of them knew how to be fragile while still being Augustus Waters."

Elgort admits now that he wasn't entirely sure that he could bring alive the character's more desperate moments, relating his initial frustration at being unable to summon up the fear and anger needed in a pivotal scene. But he succeeded, likening it to an out-of-body experience.

"It was three hours of my life just losing it," Elgort says, tearing up a bit at the memory. "I felt like a little baby again. I couldn't stop crying, even in between takes. And it was so rewarding. I wasn't sure it was going to happen and it just … happened. At that point, it wasn't acting any more. It was just real.

"Let me tell you," he adds, with that crooked smile, "I slept well that night."

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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Weak earnings from Ford, others drag stocks lower

Stocks headed lower in Friday morning trading, dragged down by disappointing results out of retail giant Amazon and Ford. Escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine also weighed on investors' minds. 

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 15 points, or 0.8 percent, to 1,863 as of 11:17 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 144 points, or 0.9 percent, to 16,357 and the Nasdaq composite fell 63 points, or 1.5 percent, to 4,085. All three indexes are now down the week. Of the three, only the S&P 500 still has slight gain for the year to date, 0.8 percent. 

FORD STALLS: Ford fell 58 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $15.74 after the company reported earnings that fell short of Wall Street's expectations. Worldwide sales rose 6 percent in the first quarter, but the company reported a sales drop in North America that cut into the company's profit. General Motors fell 47 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $33.70. 

AMAZON PRICE CUT: Amazon, the world's largest online store, sank $33.24, or 10 percent, to $304.31. Amazon reported late Thursday an increase in first-quarter profit, but the company also said that spending on investments will likely lead to an operating loss in the second quarter. 

VOLATILITY: Investors have had little patience for companies missing their forecasts this quarter, said Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman. 

"The market is in a precarious position at the moment, and overacts to bad news far more than it did last year," he said, noting as an example the 10 percent drop in Amazon's stock price, even though the company did meet analysts' forecasts. "This volatility doesn't have to be the enemy, because it allows you to pick up companies on the cheap." 

RUSSIA: Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia on Thursday of failing to live up to commitments it made to ease the crisis in Ukraine. In blunt language, Kerry said that unless Moscow takes immediate steps to de-escalate the situation, Washington will have no choice but to impose additional sanctions. 

OTHER MARKETS: Prices for U.S. government bonds rose, pushing the yield on the 10-year note down to 2.67 percent from 2.68 percent late Thursday. Yields fall when bond prices rise. The price of oil slipped $1.32, or 1.3 percent, to $100.65. 

 

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‘Edge of Tomorrow’: Emily Blunt talks Tom Cruise, brutal sci-fi battle

For the cast, crew and a platoon of weary extras shooting the 3-D sci-fi extravaganza "Edge of Tomorrow" at England's Leavesden Studios in late 2012, the beach set became synonymous with suffering.

Built to recall such World War II coastal conflicts as the Invasion of Normandy or the Battle of Dunkirk, the sandy set proved to be as loathsome as the brutal alien marauders known as "mimics" that star Tom Cruise battles while wearing an 85-pound metal exoskeleton in the film (which reportedly cost between $175 million and $200 million and is due in theaters June 6).

"That beach became known by everyone working as 'the Bitch,'" said "Edge of Tomorrow" costar Emily Blunt. "It was England. It was cold. The sand was so cumbersome. There were explosions. And everyone was running around in the metal suits. It became like this six-week mission to just get through the beach set."

"Edge of Tomorrow" is based on the Japanese young adult novella "All You Need Is Kill." Director Doug Liman grafts "Transformers"-like robot shoot-'em-up action onto a gritty wartime drama a la "Saving Private Ryan" with a strong narrative debt to 1993's time-warp comedy "Groundhog Day."

Cruise's character, Lt. Col. Bill Cage, finds himself stuck in a "time loop," thrown wholly unprepared into a brutal combat scenario in which he's killed repeatedly, only to find himself inexplicably resurrected anew after each death to fight the same beach-set battle again.

Blunt portrays a legendary Special Forces soldier who killed 1,000 mimics in a single shootout and now serves as mentor to Cruise's bewildered hero as the Doomsday Clock on Earth's invasion ticks toward zero.

"She had the same power that Tom's character now has," Blunt explained. "She really is the only person on the planet who understands what he's going through. She no longer has that power but sees he's the key to winning the war."

For her part, Blunt — known for portraying an evil fashionista in 2006's "The Devil Wears Prada" and starring in indie fare such as "The Adjustment Bureau" and "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" — went on a three-month crash course in Krav Maga, track running and gymnastics to meet the physical challenges of acting and fighting in metal battle armor while strung up on aerial wires.

"I almost broke my nose in training," Blunt said, laughing at the memory. "I caught my sword on the wire. That was the only part where I was like, 'I won't be able to shoot tomorrow!'"

– Chris Lee | @LATHeroComplex

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Andrew Garfield on Spidey sequel: ‘This is the Spider-Man I want to be’

Andrew Garfield, the star of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," took one glance around the Bel-Air eatery and made a quick assessment:

"Peter Parker wouldn't be allowed in here," the 30-year-old said with a nod.

It is nearly impossible to picture the brainy, blue-collar kid from Forest Hills, Queens, enjoying fine California cuisine on an upscale restaurant patio on an April afternoon, and even Garfield, the 30-year-old actor who has lived inside Peter Parker's skin for the last few years, seems a little too low-key and comfortably unkempt to belong to the class of diners soaking up the mild sunshine.

But Peter's outsider quality and the transformational aspect of his accidental encounter with a scientifically enhanced arachnid was one thing that so deeply appealed to Garfield long before he ever starred in a blockbuster or had even settled on an acting career. The self-described skinny kid in England who was bullied by his classmates found solace — and hope — in the webslinger.

"I needed a myth," Garfield said of his attraction to the crafty costumed hero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko at Marvel Comics in 1962. "I needed a story to put myself into to understand where I was at, to remind me that it's OK to be imperfect…. You can be imperfect and still be a hero. That's incredibly empowering for young people."

In the new $200-million production — directed like its predecessor by Marc Webb — Garfield's wall-crawling hero is beset by numerous threats, chief among them Jamie Foxx's Electro, an incandescent blue bad guy who wields the ability to control the power grid.

"The Amazing Spider-Man 2″ star Andrew Garfield is photographed at the Hotel Bel-Air. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Yet even as he must try to contain the damage Electro inflicts across Manhattan, Peter Parker struggles to learn more about his own past, including his father's demise. He's also wrestling with his relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), attempting to balance his feelings for her with his desire to keep her out of harm's way. Plus there's the matter of an old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), whose reappearance spells trouble.

It's the kind of conflicted, complicated character that appeals to the actor.

"This is the Spider-Man movie that I want to make," said Garfield. "This is the Spider-Man that I want to portray, and this is the Spider-Man that I want to have the opportunity to be."

Born in Los Angeles but raised in London, Garfield attended the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and found work on stage before winning smaller turns on English TV (he even showed up on the cult series "Doctor Who"). He began to build a reputation as a serious, emerging talent with his performance as crime reporter Eddie Dunford in the "Red Riding" miniseries, a moody saga comprising three overlapping violent tales.

That success led to lauded roles in Mark Romanek's somber literary adaptation "Never Let Me Go" and David Fincher's Oscar-winning 2010 drama for Sony, "The Social Network," in which he played Eduardo Saverin, beleaguered friend to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg).

Soon after, he was approached with an opportunity to audition for the studio's Spider-Man reboot — a project that initially generated controversy following so closely after 2007′s "Spider-Man 3," the film that brought director Sam Raimi's earlier blockbuster trilogy about the character to a close. To book the audition, Garfield said he was required to sign a contract stating that he would accept the part if it were offered to him without first being allowed to read the script.

"I was like, 'This is ridiculous,'" he recalled. "I don't even know that I'm going to get on with the people. They were like, 'This is the way it is with these movies. The studio has the power. So either you sign up now or they don't audition you.' The 3-year-old inside me is going, 'You're hesitating?'"

The actor said he developed a rapport with Webb, who came to the movie as the director of the indie breakout "(500) Days of Summer," but the creative team struggled to bring something surprising to a retelling of Spider-Man's well-known origins, which were recounted once more in the script for the 2012 film credited to James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves.

"The fresh stuff in that film was invented on the day," Garfield said. "We were given a structure, but there had to be a lot of invention going on to give it life. I felt like there were lots of missed opportunities. It was heartbreaking in a lot of ways. I didn't sleep."

"The Amazing Spider-Man" turned out to be a blockbuster hit that took in upward of $262 million at the domestic box office and also earned critical praise, thanks in part to the winning chemistry between Garfield and Stone, who met and began dating during the production.
"Emma and Andrew, the spontaneity of their interaction is what I think everybody reacts to, and how connected they are," Webb said. "They're not just reading lines. You're watching people have fun, and that doesn't always happen. They have extraordinary chemistry."
Garfield described Stone in glowing terms, calling her "a perfect scene partner," someone who is "open and present and flowing like a body of water." But he was reluctant to share details about their off-screen lives.

"There is this assumption now that if you're an actor you're asking to be famous and you're asking to be a celebrity and to have your private life spread in whatever publication or online," Garfield said. "I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have to please people by talking about something that is no one else's business."

With the exception of the "Spider-Man" movies, Garfield seems to prefer projects that title toward the prestigious — he recently shot the indie drama "99 Homes" with award-winning filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, and he's poised to play a 17th century Jesuit priest for director Martin Scorsese in the film "Silence." On stage, he won acclaim (including a Tony Award nomination) for his Broadway run playing Biff Loman in "Death of a Salesman" opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman for director Mike Nichols in 2012.

His adventures in comic book cinema aside, it would be difficult to accuse Garfield of courting fame. In person, he's thoughtful and soft-spoken and refers often to "the energy" of a person or a place, displaying much of the low-decibel charm he brings to his scruffy, sarcastic Peter Parker. He makes his home in the same city as his screen alter ego too, where he said it's easier to avoid becoming caught up in Hollywood politics.

"New York City, you know that no one [cares] about who you are — that's healthy. Here, people really care," said Garfield, between bites of a lobster Cobb salad. "I do just want to create things and be an artist and explore and experiment and be free of fear of judgment. That's the big joke. The religion of celebrity and fame, the fanaticism of the star, it's not real in any way. It's all illusion.

"L.A.'s dangerous for actors. I think there's a collective unconscious thing happening where there's value placed on things that have no value, on what a film makes at the box office — that being a mark of success as opposed to the journey of creating the thing."

In the case of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," that journey was far less fraught this time around. The film shot in New York for the first half of 2013, working from a script by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner that looked back to comics lore, including a famous Gerry Conway 1973 story line that involved the demise of a key character.

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Webb said he disliked the idea of the sequel being known as a darker film, and Garfield said he sought to bring a joyous spirit to even the most difficult scenes.

"I think me and Marc were both like, 'What is Spider-Man to us?'" Garfield said. "Spider-Man is the trickster, the neurotic, talk-too-much giddy teenage boy that's really a bent arrow, the rebel. I wanted somehow to try to have fun in every scene even if the situation was awful."

The approach seems to be paying off. Early reviews have been largely positive in the wake of the film's early international opening in mid-April — the Guardian's Xan Brooks described the film as "savvy, punchy and dashing," praising Garfield for his "whelpish and raw" take on Peter.

Industry tracking suggests that "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" could take in more than $100 million in its North American debut, which must come as good news to Sony given the studio's plans to expand the comic book franchise beyond just the future "Spider-Man" sequels set to open in 2016 and 2018. New movies about Spidey's nemesis Venom and the collective of villains known as the Sinister Six are also in the works.

Garfield said he's not entirely certain where he might want to take Peter Parker, but the boyish leading man isn't too worried about outgrowing the character, despite playing someone so many years his junior.

"I got a lot to figure out still," Garfield said. "It's never done."

– Gina McIntyre | @LATHeroComplex

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