"This is very cool," Adam Driver says as the serene face of the Statue of Liberty comes into view. We levitate around it for a little while, observing the trails of tourists that scurry, antlike, under Lady Liberty's skirt. The air is smooth and clear—just as our helicopter pilot promised. Then: "Shiiiit!" Driver says, as the machine shudders and dips, then jokingly throws out his arms as though bracing himself against potential disaster. The gust lasts approximately two seconds. The pilot glances back quizzically at this strange tall man with the slightly familiar face. Driver pushes back his longish hair—the indie-rock styling of which may not be so much his as that of the character he plays on HBO's Girls—and nods. "I'm glad they gave us these fanny packs," he deadpans, patting the life preserver on his waist.
There's not much Adam Driver is afraid of, certainly not a touristy helicopter trip. "We rode in helicopters in the Marines," he told me on the tarmac. "Also, we've been using them a lot in this movie I'm in." He sounded a little embarrassed, like being in a movie is so much less cool than being a Marine. But it was, after all, his second choice of career.
These days it's rare to encounter an emerging Hollywood talent who is also a veteran—of a Who Wore It Best battle, maybe, but not the actual military. But before Driver became the breakout star of a show about entitled slackers in Brooklyn, he served in the armed forces. More specifically, he was "a ****ing Marine who went to Juilliard," as one director put it, in that tone of curiosity and awe Driver tends to inspire.
The helicopter arcs over the Brooklyn Bridge. "There's my apartment," Driver says, pointing. He sounds a bit wistful, probably because lately he hasn't seen the inside of it much. Over the past couple of years, Driver has been in the midst of a transformation, from the most unexpected star of a cult TV show to being "probably one of the most sought-after actors around," says director Shawn Levy, who moved heaven and earth—in the form of the schedules of Jason Bateman and Tina Fey—to cast Driver in the role of the perpetually adolescent younger brother in this month's This Is Where I Leave You. The movie is the first in a veritable avalanche of prominent films Driver will soon appear in, among them Jeff Nichols's Midnight Special, Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, and Martin Scorsese's Silence. Like a cool band, he's been plucked from hipster Brooklyn and is in the process of being fully mainstreamed, though he still retains his cred: Last night, he was up late shooting scenes for the fourth season of Girls, even though today he's leaving for the London set of the latest installment in that blockbuster of blockbusters, Star Wars. I'm looking at him craning his neck toward the chopper window, this quiet, slightly goofy guy whose Adam's apple, in profile, sticks out roughly as much as his nose, and Driver doesn't seem like the world's most likely movie star. But "this kid," Levy says, with mark-my-words import, "is going to be one of the most formidable actors of his generation."
"That's nice of Shawn," Driver says when I tell him what Levy said. "He's, like, the kind of person who believes things will turn out good. Unlike me, who believes things are going to go to **** at any minute."
A week or so before our helicopter trip, we met for lunch in Manhattan. From the moment we walked in, it was clear that the place, with its white tablecloths and overly attentive waiters, was all wrong for Driver, his sensibility as well as his size—not that Driver, a polite midwesterner, would ever complain. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, he folded his six-foot-three body into one of the froofy chairs, ordered a steak, medium-rare, and didn't even blink when it arrived covered in edible flowers. "My plan was to be able to make a living as an actor," he says. "And then everything else just..." He motions with one of his hands and nearly smacks a water pitcher out of the grasp of a lurking waiter. "Oh no!" he says, hunching his wide shoulders forward in shame, like he's the Incredible Hulk and has just burst out of his clothes in public.
Which is kind of a fitting image to show what happened to Driver. As the lovable sexual deviant Adam Sackler, he burst, partially and sometimes fully naked, onto the screen in Girls, playing the boyfriend of Lena Dunham's character, immediately commanding attention. It's hard to say what was most compelling about him: perhaps his face, with all of its different planes, like a carving from Easter Island. Or maybe his incongruously muscular body, which seemed to contain equal amounts of twitchy intensity and feral grace. Or it could be the way he spoke, forcefully but always with a tremulous undercurrent of feeling that somehow made him endearing, even as he barked out fantasies to Dunham's character while having sex: "You're a junkie and you're only 11 and you had your ****ing Cabbage Patch lunchbox. You're a dirty little wh*re, and I'm going to send you home to your parents covered in cum."
"To me, Girls announced this wholly new and surprising kind of actor," says Levy, who came away from his initial coffee date with Driver with what sounds like a full-blown man crush. "The way he moves, talks, eats, navigates the world," he gushes. "It's really authentic. Adam is a ****ing man."
At a time when nearly every industry is trying to commodify authenticity—McDonald's artisan burger, anyone?—Hollywood has lagged. To Levy and others, Driver is a welcome course correction from the parade of blue-eyed Brad Pitt types (your Chris Hemsworths, your Chris Pines). His ripped physique is comparable to today's action heroes', but beneath his pecs there is the suggestion of a brain, a heart, a soul. Driver's electric intensity and his intriguing backstory suggest that this is a man who has Seen Things. "He's a real person," says Baumbach.
^ not the most optimistic guy hey? but wow, he's bang on here:
