“When I joined the military, I was not thinking of politics at all,” he says. Character is her starting place; it's never from spectacle, it's always from within. You’re getting drunk all the time and driving your car. In the video, Driver comments how his connection to the character motivated him to want to master the many physical demands of the movie, and how working with Huthart helped him unlock his full potential as an action performer. He said he was, but didn’t explain what was on his mind: He had just wrapped one of his final shoots for this Star Wars trilogy — and what he believed to be Kylo Ren’s final Rise of Skywalker scene — and then sprinted for the airport. December 2, 2019. 'Rise of Skywalker' Tries to Retcon 'Last Jedi', Adam Driver Thanks Fans For Donating to His Cause. I just knew that whoever attacked us, I wanted to attack them back. It’s not just that he’s like, ‘Ah, I’m in a bad mood.’ He’s wrestling with the material.” As the story goes, while making the original Star Wars, Mark Hamill once fretted aloud that after Leia, Han, and Luke escaped the garbage compactor on the Death Star, their hair should have been wet and mussed in subsequent scenes.

You’re finally sitting, and you have six hours to think about your last shot. His packed schedule is getting to him; as his son gets older, it’s getting more painful to leave him and Joanne Tucker, Driver’s wife of six years. “It was just the weight of it. “In my twenties. We meet near the waterfront, where Driver shows up with a brownish dog on a leash. Driver is having trouble taking in this season of triumphs, or maybe he deliberately avoids thinking about it. ", These Shoes Helped Me Level Up My Home Workouts, The Best Face Masks That Won’t Fog Up Your Glasses, 3 Ways to Make Your Flu Shot Even More Effective. Thanks to Disney dropping the digital release for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker early, folks have had time to pore over the making-of documentary, which is loaded with interesting info about the final installment of The Skywalker Saga. The Report, meanwhile, offers an eyebrow-raising intersection with Driver’s life story: He joined the Marines after 9/11, intending to fight in the very war that devolved into the torture-laden interrogations his character spends the movie investigating. That enemy was faceless in my mind.

“Even though he’s in some ways the villain. “I often think that there’s someone hanging in the sidelines,” he says, “with, like, a big fly swatter. After the Marines, he found his way to Juilliard, and eventually to an audition room for an HBO show called Girls. Rolling Stone ’s Brian Hiatt recently sat down with Adam Driver, the man responsible for bringing Kylo Ren, one of Star Wars ’ most vulnerable and physical villains, to the big screen. Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Daniel J. Jones, played by Adam Driver in The Report, leaked a report on the CIA’s use of torture. Can I live up to that? “He’s almost like a spoiled rich kid who has to evolve into something,” says Driver.

“He practices a way of being in the world that takes the celebrity out of it.”. So I was like, 'OK, if it looks good you can do it, if it doesn't look that good, I'll be putting a stunt guy in.

Moose is part Rottweiler, part mystery breed, part pit bull, and his owner is a fierce defender of pits. Rolling Stone Send a Tip In a new featurette included on the home release of the movie, stunt coordinator Eunice Huthart reveals that Driver actually performed all of his own stunts during Kylo Ren's highly memorable (and meme-able) fight scenes. During training at Camp Pendleton in San Diego, he and a friend missed physical training one morning, and their captain told them to go off and exercise on their own. Adam Driver Breaks Down How He Trained for Kylo Ren's Fight Scenes in The Rise of Skywalker The actor was so attached to his character, he insisted on … “It’s just they have shitty owners. Chris Evans Reveals 'Winter Soldier' Training, Explaining 'The Rise of Skywalker' Opening Scene, 6 Things You Didn't Know About Adam Driver. “That seems to be more relatable and human than just someone who is a psychopath.”, Some of Driver’s best moments as Kylo come in silence, when we get to watch the pain in his eyes (and in general, Driver loves scenes where he gets to listen without saying a word). Sign up for our newsletter. In the interview, Driver discusses his past in the Marine Corps and delves a little bit into what … The show’s co-creator, Lena Dunham, was enchanted by his total lack of fear. “This is Moose,” he says, making a formal introduction. He attempted to carry on in the wake of the injury, but ended up honorably discharged. It’s certainly hard to name an actor who’s having a bigger 2019: Driver spent his spring and summer on Broadway, throwing hilarious and heartbreaking nightly fits onstage in a production of the verbose 1980s play Burn This alongside Keri Russell, and will close out the year with three movies in succession: the slow-burning The Report (in which Driver plays Daniel J. Jones, who led a damning investigation on the full extent of U.S. torture of terror suspects), Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (in which Driver plays a theater director going through the grown-up horror story of a bicoastal divorce and custody battle with Scarlett Johansson), and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (in which Driver finishes out his trilogy as Kylo Ren in one of the most anticipated movies ever made, the Emperor returns, and, if you believe the trailer, C-3PO might die). Adam Driver played the complex villain of the revived Star Wars universe for three movies, culminating in a dramatic exit which proved both satisfying and problematic, depending on which fans you ask. “But I can see on the outside, if I analyzed it, which I don’t, that someone who’s killed his class doesn’t really seem to be good boyfriend material.” To be fair, the Reylos acknowledge that Kylo must experience redemption — Bendemption, naturally — before love can flourish. For The Report, he “devoured” the 500-page-long publicly available version of the titular document, says director Scott Z. Burns: “He wasn’t going to say a single fucking word if he didn’t know exactly why he was saying it.”, His frequent collaborator Baumbach says Driver “brings added majesty” to his lines, reminding him of the “character actors who became stars in the Seventies — Pacino, Hoffman, De Niro, the best movie actors ever.

It was all really cool. I’m too exhausted. Adam Driver, Girls, J.J. Abrams, long reads, Noah Baumbach, Star Wars The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker.

because he’s so in his own head that you don’t quite know how to talk to him. It’s all because he’s processing. “I literally thought, ‘This guy does not give a shit,’” Dunham once told me. Driver had bought himself a mountain bike, and promptly plunged down a steep cliff at high speed. I connect that a lot with him.”, None of those guys ever flew a spaceship. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Even in rehearsals, Adam's in character.

There’s lots of things to process.”, Driver told me in 2015 that entering the Star Wars universe was “not an easy yes. Huthart reportedly was against Driver doing his own stunts, but the actor quickly won her over and was soon swinging from wires during the film’s climactic lightsaber duel: He explains in the documentary how protective he is over Kylo’s body language. His mood that day was nearly giddy as he approached the end of an acclaimed Broadway run. Star Wars: Episode IX) is the ninth and final part of the Skywalker saga, which debuted in … 1 comments. I go, 'Adam, there's a level you can do and there's a level you can't.' But when you get glimpses of him as pre-Dark Side Ben Solo, the character is also unexpectedly sympathetic, even as he’s nearly weeping in frustration as he commands an entire army to train their lasers on Luke Skywalker. But the first words out of J.J.’s mouth were about character and story. This Is What Stealing an Election Looks Like. Driver and I have spoken several times over the years, most recently in July, backstage at Burn This. The actor was so attached to his character, he insisted on doing all his own stunts. He took over as the Supreme Leader … “I have this long saber, and I can’t see where it’s going. I’ve seen a lot of bigger-budget movies that sacrifice character and stories for spectacle, and I had no idea what it was going to look like or what the script was. At London’s Pinewood Studios, surrounded by a squadron of actors in stormtrooper outfits and a life-size X-wing Fighter prop, his vision almost entirely blocked by a not-quite-finalized version of his Kylo Ren mask, Driver was forced to focus mostly on a practical matter: avoiding grievous injury to an 85-year-old Hollywood legend.

I’m 35, and I still don’t know anything about anything.”. A confused, angry man-boy radicalized by powerful forces whispering in his ear, an heir to generational trauma raised in an era of endless war, is an all-too-believable threat. “Everybody else was asleep, and I didn’t even realize that I was just sitting there in a daze,” he says. Adam Driver stars in 'The Report, Noah Baumbach’s 'Marriage Story' and Kylo Ren in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' this fall. In This Article:

"There was no ice-breaking with Adam," says Huthart of the famously intense actor. From there, it’s pretty much all been uphill at hyperspeed, even as he continues, for all his training and obsessive preparation, to feel like he’s swinging blind.

Still, Driver doesn’t mind when kids in his building say, “Good morning, Kylo Ren.” And he’s taken home a full version of his costume, which he keeps in a box in his guest room. On that day in mid-2014, however, shooting his very first scene for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Driver had to dial down his ambitions a bit. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. But he did everything!". Did I get it right? As fans know, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (a.k.a. “He’s following his path of finding who he is.

Among the best is when a Girls character said he looks like “an old-timey criminal”; the most unkind and inaccurate comes from Driver himself, who called his adolescent features “ratlike.” What was originally striking about him in his perpetually shirtless Girls days remains so: a hyperbuff, perfected body, contrasted with a face that seems less finished, more mutable, almost a rough draft of a face, finalized only when he’s in character. Adam Driver‘s extremely passionate fanbase is going to be particularly thrilled as the making-of feature highlights his intense dedication to performing his own stunts even on his birthday. Both The Report and Marriage Story have personal resonance for Driver. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. “There’s something in having an antagonist who is a little more vulnerable,” says Driver. . © Copyright 2020 Rolling Stone, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. . “So much plays on his face,” says Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who first suggested Driver for the role after working with him on his tiny part (as a telegraph operator) in Lincoln, in her prior capacity as Steven Spielberg’s longtime producer. “It was really physically exhausting, and we were wet and soaked and cold and on wires–I loved it,” Driver says with glee in the documentary.