15 Unlikely British TV Shows To Spawn Hollywood Stars

5. Sugar Rush €“ Andrew Garfield

I watched every episode of Sugar Rush. It was a teenage drama (although after the watershed) which starred Olivia Hallinan as a girl named Kim who falls in love with her best friend Sugar, played by Lenora Crichlow (who later appeared as Annie in the British version of Being Human as well as Gigi in Back in the Game). Andrew Garfield only appeared in five episodes out of twenty as Tom, but was actually something of a fairly central character. This was because although Hallinan's character was lusting after Sugar, she ended up first being friends with Tom and then sleeping with him. I have a vague recollection that Tom was a nerdy, lanky teen, but even watching Never Let Me Go, I hadn't realised that it was the same person. Heck, when I saw Garfield in two episodes of Doctor Who I didn't realise it was him either. Sugar Rush was Garfield's first proper role €“ he is only credited for a single short before that. Of course, the reason why an American like Garfield made his first television appearance in a Channel 4 comedy-drama was because he moved to the UK at the age of three with his family. After appearing in a number of British television series Red Riding, he suddenly cropped up in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in 2009 and from then on it was a short ride to being cast as Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man, via David Fincher's The Social Network. Mind you, the Peter Parker character isn't excessively different from Tom in Sugar Rush. Both were meant to be roughly the same age (despite Garfield being seven years older for the former) although Parker is obviously more successful with the ladies. Sugar Rush shouldn't have launched anyone's career €“ certainly Crichlow hasn't done badly out of it, but Hallinan hasn't done much. Yet somehow Garfield managed to make a career coming out of it.