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The 27-year-old, six-foot-two actor, who made People's Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list in 1998, is the son of actress Jane Fonda and activist and teacher Tom Hayden. That makes him Henry's grandson, Peter's nephew, Bridget's cousin and Vanessa Vadim's half-brother.
In his own words, Garity got his name "in vitro" from both parents. "When I was born, they figured giving me a different name might preserve some anonymity and help me become my own individual." Garity is Hayden's mother's maiden name.
That anonymity is being stripped away as his career blossoms. But Garity feels safely his own man and would do so even if he called himself Troy Hayden or Troy Fonda.
"My parents are promoters of independence and individual identity, so I think, regardless of the name, there would not be that great a change."
What is changing is the attention being paid. He made his TV movie debut in 1996, playing a bartender in The Cherokee Kid; his feature debut as an intern in Conspiracy Theory in 1997, and even played his father in the shot-in-Toronto Abbie Hoffman biopic Steal This Movie from 2000. But none of his work made much of an impression. He is making an impact in Bandits as the would-be stunt man who lusts after the girl in the pink boots and who drives the getaway car.
Asked what he does best and worst, Garity says: "I am a really good cook and I think I am a really bad interview."
That's not true, actually, not the bad interview part. But he is shy, speaking in a whisper while maintaining an unfailingly polite demeanor, calling the women "ma'am" and the men "sir" in a group session.
As The Sun points out how quiet he seems, even though he is so flamboyant in Bandits, Garity says: "I'm a man of masks. If I can have a costume, I can let myself go free. It's different when you're in a room and being asked fairly personal questions. I tend to retreat."
To shoot Bandits he needed to pump up the volume.
"It is difficult for me to smile on cue," he says, "so I needed to find a way I could maintain a sort of kinetic energy, a bounce. So I found myself working with my mom. She figured out that I should base the character on her dog Roxie, who is a golden retriever and has that joie de vivre, that bounce, like someone whose ass wiggles when they get happy."
Both parents, although they eventually split up, nurtured him in a creative upbringing which he nows calls "curious -- with a lot of long conversations over dinner." He was sent to the Laurel Springs Camp for the Arts in Santa Barbara as a youngster, writing and performing plays in the comedia del arte style.
At 14, he fell in love with the ringleader's nymph at a performance of the Cirque du Soleil and started hanging out with the circus troupe, travelling with them to San Francisco, New York and Toronto.
He did not perform: "I've never been that agile so I never wrapped my legs around my head." But he did begin to understand the act of creation, the thrill of performance.
"I can link it to something inherent in all of us. Creation, it's really our purpose. When you're involved in something passionate, when you're creating, you become full. Colours change. And I found that feeling on stage (then later on film sets). So I'm constantly trying to maintain that and stay creative and I think that's why I'm here right now."