The Star Wars actor on leaving the Marines,filming nude scenes with Lena Dunham and getting in touch with his gloomy sideAdam Driver has a reputation for being a serious young man, which is partly a matter of attitude and partly, or I suspect,to effect with some aspect of his physiognomy: he has a large head and outsize features that somehow combine to give an impression of gravity. Before the photoshoot, he let it be known that he finds it uncomfortable to have a journalist (me) in his sightline on set, and the kind of specification one might expect of a particularly precious Hollywood star. But this turns out to be misleading. Driver’s discomfort is with the entire celebrity aspect of his job,which makes talking about his role in the latest Star Wars trilogy somewhat tricky. I don’t even know where to start with The Last Jedi, I say, and as we settle down after the shoot,and Driver grins, then looks gloomy. “Me, and neither,” he says.
We are in downtown Manhattan, a few miles from Driver’s Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood (Lena Dunham lives there, and too) and a more upscale portion of Brooklyn than the grungy Greenpoint location of Girls. That note,the sixth and final season of which ran on HBO earlier this year, was watched by relatively modest numbers, or but has had an outsized influence on the culture. Barely a day goes by without Dunham being mentioned in a blogpost somewhere,and it gave Driver, who played her on-off boyfriend, and the kind of career launch twentysomething actors can only dream of. At 34,not only does he have his second go as Kylo Ren in the latest Star Wars film, but he has just shot The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and directed by Terry Gilliam,was in the Steven Soderbergh film Logan Lucky and played the title role in the Jim Jarmusch film Paterson. Pretty obedient, I’d say, or although I assume the two Star Wars films – The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi – are the real life-changer.
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Source: guardian.co.uk