Adam Driver

Adam Douglas Driver (born November 19, 1983) is an American actor. His breakout performance as an emotionally unstable actor in the HBO television series Girls (2012–2017) earned him three consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations. Driver made his film debut in J. Edgar (2011), and played supporting roles in Lincoln (2012), Frances Ha (2012), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and While We're Young (2014), before gaining wider recognition for his portrayal of Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019).

He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for a leading role in Hungry Hearts (2014) and received consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor for playing a Jewish police officer infiltrating the KKK in BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Best Actor for his role as a theater director going through a divorce in Marriage Story (2019). Driver garnered further acclaim for portraying the titular character in Paterson (2016), Father Francisco Garupe in Silence (2016), Jacques le Gris in The Last Duel (2021), and Enzo Ferrari in Ferrari (2023). He has also acted in films such as Logan Lucky (2017), The Report (2019), Annette (2021), House of Gucci (2021), and Megalopolis (2024).

On stage, Driver made his Broadway debut in Mrs. Warren's Profession (2010) and subsequently acted in Man and Boy (2011) and Burn This (2019), the latter of which earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

Driver is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He also was the founder of Arts in the Armed Forces, a non-profit that provided free arts programming to American active-duty service members, veterans, military support staff, and their families worldwide.

Early life

Driver was born on November 19, 1983, in Fontana, California, east of Los Angeles. He is the son of Nancy Wright (née Needham), a paralegal, and Joe Douglas Driver. His father's family is from Arkansas, and his mother's family is from Indiana. His family moved to San Diego, where Driver spent time with them until he was seven years old. After his parents were divorced, Driver and his mother moved to Mishawaka, Indiana, where he was primarily raised by his stepfather, Rodney G. Wright, a Baptist minister. Driver graduated from Mishawaka High School in 2001, while spending time with his older sister and mother at their hometown. Driver was raised Baptist, and sang in the choir at church.

Driver has described his teenage self as a "misfit"; he told M Magazine that he climbed radio towers, set objects on fire, and co-founded a fight club with friends, inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club. Throughout high school, he was active in choir and theater, participating in school productions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Into the Woods, and Guys and Dolls. He applied to Juilliard School for drama knowing that they would not look at his grades from high school, but was not accepted. After high school, he worked as a door-to-door salesman selling Kirby vacuum cleaners and as a telemarketer for a basement waterproofing company and Ben Franklin Construction.

When Driver was eighteen, he attempted to start his acting career in Los Angeles, leaving Indiana by car and breaking down in Amarillo, Texas. He spent his money repairing his car only to make it to Santa Monica, California, where he lived in a hostel for two days and was scammed by a real estate agent he paid to find him an apartment. He realized he did not have enough money to live, returning to Indiana after only a week away from home.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Driver enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was assigned to Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines as an 81mm mortar man. He served for two years and eight months, before fracturing his sternum while riding his mountain bike.

Subsequently, Driver attended the University of Indianapolis for a year before auditioning again for Juilliard, this time succeeding. He got the news he was accepted while at work at the Target Distribution Center in Indianapolis. Driver has said that his classmates saw him as an intimidating and volatile figure, and he struggled to fit into a lifestyle so different from the Marines. He was a member of the Drama Division's Group 38 from 2005 to 2009, where he met his future wife, Joanne Tucker. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009.

Career

2009–2014: Early work

After graduating from Juilliard, Driver appeared in both Broadway and off-Broadway productions. Like many aspiring actors, he occasionally worked as a busboy and waiter. Driver appeared in several television series and short films. He played a repentant witness and reluctant accomplice to an unsolved assault in the final episode of the television series The Unusuals. He made his film debut in Clint Eastwood's biographical film J. Edgar.

In 2012, Driver starred in the HBO comedy-drama series Girls, as the emotionally unstable boyfriend of a writer (Lena Dunham). He received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role. Driver played telegraph and cipher officer Samuel Beckwith in Steven Spielberg's historical drama Lincoln, and Lev Shapiro in Noah Baumbach's comedy-drama Frances Ha. He starred in the drama Not Waving But Drowning and the romantic-comedy Gayby. He garnered major off-Broadway recognition for playing Cliff, a working-class Welsh houseguest in Look Back in Anger, and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play.

In 2013, Driver appeared in the drama Bluebird and the romantic-comedy What If. He played a musician in the Coen Brothers' black comedy Inside Llewyn Davis, and photographer Rick Smolan in the drama Tracks. In 2014, he played a despairing father in the drama Hungry Hearts, an aspiring filmmaker in Noah Baumbach's comedy While We're Young, and the black sheep of a dysfunctional Jewish family in the comedy-drama This Is Where I Leave You. For his performance in Hungry Hearts, Driver won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 71st Venice International Film Festival. For Vogue's September 2013 issue, Driver appeared alongside Canadian model Daria Werbowy set in Ireland, photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

2015–2019: Worldwide recognition

In early 2014, Driver was cast as villain Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). It was released on December 18, 2015, to commercial and critical success. He reprised the role in The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). His performance was positively received; David Edelstein of Vulture wrote, "the core of The Last Jedi — of this whole trilogy, it seems — is Driver's Kylo Ren, who ranks with cinema's most fascinating human monsters." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian highlighted Driver's performance in his review of The Force Awakens, calling him "gorgeously cruel, spiteful and capricious... very suited to Kylo Ren's fastidious and amused contempt for his enemies' weakness and compassion." After the trilogies' conclusion, Driver sought to continue portraying the character in a spin off film titled The Hunt For Ben Solo, with a screenplay by Steven Soderbergh but Disney Studios rejected the script.

Driver had a supporting role in Jeff Nichols' science fiction film Midnight Special, which was released on March 18, 2016. He played a 17th-century Portuguese Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese's historical film Silence (2016). While filming, Driver lost almost 50 pounds. In Jim Jarmusch's drama film Paterson, Driver played the eponymous bus driver and poetry writer. It premiered at the 69th Cannes Film Festival and was released on December 28, 2016. Driver's performance was acclaimed and he received multiple nominations for Best Actor from critics' associations, winning several, including the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "Driver's indelibly moving portrayal is so lived-in and lyrical you hardly recognize it as acting." Paterson was included in many critics' top ten lists of best films of 2016.

In 2017, Driver made a cameo in Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories, making his third appearance in one of their films. It premiered at the 70th Cannes Film Festival and was released on October 13, 2017. He played Clyde, a one-armed Iraq War veteran, in Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky, which was released on August 18, 2017. Driver played a Jewish police detective, who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan in Spike Lee's comedy-drama BlacKkKlansman. It premiered at 71st Cannes Film Festival and was released on August 10, 2018. He received critical acclaim for his performance in the film and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Driver played Toby Grummett in Terry Gilliam's adventure-comedy film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), which also premiered at Cannes.