Adam Driver

Adam Driver (born November 19, 1983, San Diego, California, U.S.) is an American actor noted for the off-center intensity and genuineness of his performances on stage and screen.

Driver’s parents, both active in the Baptist church, divorced when he was seven years old, and he then moved with his mother to her hometown of Mishawaka, Indiana. After he became interested in acting, a high-school teacher urged him to apply to the Juilliard School, but he was not accepted. Following his 2001 graduation from Mishawaka High School, he moved to Los Angeles but soon returned to Mishawaka to work in door-to-door and phone sales. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Driver enlisted in the Marine Corps. However, shortly before he was due to be deployed to Iraq, he injured his sternum and was medically discharged. At loose ends, he enrolled at the University of Indianapolis, where he performed in campus productions of Pippin and Endgame, and then auditioned again for Juilliard, this time successfully.

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Following his 2009 graduation from Juilliard, Driver began acting onstage in New York City, making his Broadway debut in a 2010 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession. He also appeared in small roles on television, and his first film appearance was in a minor part in Clint Eastwood’s biopic J. Edgar (2011). Driver then was cast as the weird and deviant boyfriend of the character played by Lena Dunham in her popular comedy series Girls (2012–17). The role brought him high visibility and three Emmy Award nominations (2013, 2014, and 2015). Driver also appeared in several movies in 2012, notably Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, in which he had a pivotal role as a telegrapher, and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. He was in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and in 2014 he played a lead role in the uncomfortable domestic drama Hungry Hearts and a charming if entitled hipster in Baumbach’s While We’re Young.

Driver was cast as the villain Kylo Ren in Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens (2015), and with this performance he became a star. He reprised the role in Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi (2017) and Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker (2019). In addition, he won praise for his portrayal of a government investigator in the sci-fi thriller Midnight Special, a bus driver and poet in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, and a 17th-century Portuguese priest in Martin Scorsese’s Silence (all 2016). In 2017 he played a one-armed Iraq War veteran in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. Driver’s portrayal of Flip Zimmerman, the Jewish police detective who helps the title character infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018), earned him an Academy Award nomination. His other film from 2018 was Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Driver continued to show his diversity in 2019, appearing in The Report, about the investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and Jarmusch’s zombie movie The Dead Don’t Die. Perhaps his most notable role that year was as Charlie Barber, a man going through a difficult divorce, in Baumbach’s Marriage Story. For his performance, Driver was nominated for a best-actor Oscar. In 2021 he appeared in the unconventional musical Annette, playing a stand-up comedian. That year he also costarred in two films directed by Ridley Scott, both of which were inspired by true events. In The Last Duel Driver portrayed a medieval squire accused of rape who fights the alleged victim’s husband (Matt Damon) in a trial by combat, and in House of Gucci he was cast as Maurizio Gucci, a fashion executive who was murdered by a hitman hired by his ex-wife (Lady Gaga).

Driver’s credits from 2022 include White Noise, Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel about a family dealing with an airborne toxic event. In 2023 he starred with Penélope Cruz in Ferrari, a biopic about the automobile manufacturer Enzo Ferrari.

In addition to his prolific film career, Driver continued to act onstage. In 2011 he appeared Off-Broadway in a production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and on Broadway in Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy. The following year he played Cliff in an Off-Broadway revival of Look Back in Anger. Driver’s volcanic turn in a 2019 production of Burn This—in which he costarred with Keri Russell—resulted in a Tony Award nomination. In 2008 he founded Arts in the Armed Forces, an organization that brings free staged readings to active and retired service members.