Adam Dri­ver: The Lim­its of Control

“I’m gonna send you home to your par­ents cov­ered in cum,” says Adam Dri­ver to Lena Dun­ham in the first sea­son of Girls with endear­ing inten­si­ty, like he absolute­ly needs to get those exact words off his chest. Driver’s char­ac­ters are not glib or sar­cas­tic. Com­e­dy comes at their expense not with their com­plic­i­ty. Remem­ber how he star­tled Oscar Isaac with the vocal range chan­neled over the words ​‘out­er’ and ​‘space’ in the Coen broth­ers’ Inside Llewyn Davis. In Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young, Driver’s seri­ous edge gives ground­ing to Jamie, a hip­ster film­mak­er who might oth­er­wise seem fly­away and amoral. It beg­gars belief that this idio­syn­crat­ic, charm­ing, indie per­former will fea­ture in Star Wars VII – The Force Awak­ens but this is what 2015 con­tains, as well as – less sur­pris­ing­ly – a role in Jeff Nichols’ Mid­night Spe­cial. We spoke to the excep­tion­al­ly polite Dri­ver while he was in Tai­wan about to start pro­duc­tion on anoth­er mas­sive­ly sig­nif­i­cant col­lab­o­ra­tion, work­ing with Mar­tin Scors­ese on Silence.

Your char­ac­ter, Jamie, has quite a manip­u­la­tive approach to cre­ativ­i­ty. How much hon­esty do you think is nec­es­sary when it comes to filmmaking?

100 per­cent. When I first read the script the char­ac­ter that I iden­ti­fied the most with was Ben Stiller’s char­ac­ter, Josh. I see the ben­e­fit of dis­ci­pline and in liv­ing with some­thing for a long time even though the process is annoy­ing, so it was tough for me to find a way in. I judge my own gen­er­a­tion for appro­pri­at­ing items they have not lived with. There’s a ben­e­fit in bore­dom and not being so inter-con­nect­ed and being alone with your thoughts and all those things. But Jamie, in the sto­ry, does cre­ate some­thing from noth­ing and works fast. Josh has been labour­ing over the same thing for years and has, at a cer­tain point, made what he’s work­ing on way too pre­cious and self-impor­tant and that’s also lim­it­ing where­as Jamie in a mat­ter of days has cre­at­ed some­thing. It’s up to every­one else to judge what that is but that ambi­tion is an attrac­tive qual­i­ty in a per­son and get­ting off on the inter-con­nect­ed­ness of every­thing is not my first impulse but I see how that’s charming.

What is the trick to sit­ting with ideas for long enough that they mature but not so long that they fester?

That’s a tricky thing about act­ing that I don’t think I’ll ever fig­ure out. There’s a dan­ger in both. If there’s any­thing I redis­cov­er any time I get to work on some­thing, it’s not know­ing an answer to any­thing. I try to prac­tice that also in life as much as pos­si­ble. Not know­ing always leads to some­thing more grat­i­fy­ing than feel­ing that you have the right answer. Obvi­ous­ly, you can’t skip steps and you should do the work. I don’t real­ly have a set process or a cer­tain way I have to do things. I also think it’s a mis­take for me to have a way of work­ing that I want to impose on every­one else, that I want them to adapt to. I always think that there’s so much infor­ma­tion in not know­ing a right answer.

Do you have any advice on devel­op­ing self-discipline?

I don’t, no, not real­ly. I was very for­tu­nate in that I just was put in sit­u­a­tions where I felt the ben­e­fit, whether it be run­ning or any­thing, real­ly. I actu­al­ly hate hav­ing to go through the process. I want to jump to the answer right away and it seems like every­thing in life tells you that you have to slow down but I have no advice because I feel like it’s some­thing that I will prac­tice and rehearse until I die.

Is act­ing a job-for-life then?

I hope I get to do it for a life. There’s noth­ing else that I would rather do.

Do you think that it helps to ground you that you lived a dif­fer­ent life before act­ing and celebrity?

I’ve just had dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, which have def­i­nite­ly helped shape who I get to be as an actor. What bet­ter act­ing train­ing than being stuck in the mil­i­tary with a bunch of 18 or 19 year-olds who are just being crazy because they’re away from home and miss­ing fam­i­ly or han­dling machine guns. We didn’t have any mon­ey, real­ly, grow­ing up and that’s a real­ly great expe­ri­ence to have. It shapes you and you get to live life and have mis­takes. Being raised in a small town in Indi­ana I’m so grate­ful for that expe­ri­ence even though at the time I couldn’t wait to get out.

Do you ever imag­ine what your younger self would have made of what you’re doing now?

I wouldn’t have been able to believe it. I was just think­ing about this recent­ly, not about act­ing, but it’s com­ing up on ten years that I’ve lived in New York. When I first moved to New York I had two big sea bags and they were just filled with clothes. I was liv­ing in Hobo­ken, New Jer­sey, in my uncle’s clos­et. He was liv­ing on the top floor of a house that didn’t have a kitchen. I stayed in his clos­et because that was the largest space on the ground to sleep. I stayed there for a cou­ple of weeks until I found a room to rent from some­one on Craigslist. I was walk­ing to all the restau­rants in that area, think­ing, ​‘I’ll just get a job and be a wait­er and start school.’ I now have a real­ly great group of friends and I get to make a liv­ing doing what I love to do and I get to trav­el, which is like a huge thing. I can’t imag­ine myself get­ting to go to Tai­wan being from Mishawa­ka, Indiana.

Read more in LWLies 58: the While We’re Young issue

What are the main dif­fer­ences between work­ing on a small, indie film like While We’re Young and work­ing on a mas­sive, mas­sive, mas­sive movie?

The ameni­ties around you are a lit­tle bet­ter on a big bud­get movie than they are on a small­er movie but it doesn’t real­ly make a dif­fer­ence. It’s not like sud­den­ly the cater­ing is bet­ter on Star Wars than on While We’re Young and it’s going to make you a bet­ter actor. I was lucky that it was JJ Abrams direct­ing Star Wars. He is some­one, like Noah, or like the Coen Broth­ers or Scors­ese, if it doesn’t make sense to the sto­ry or the char­ac­ters then every­thing else is sec­ondary. In that sense they are all the same. Some­thing like Star Wars is maybe a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent because so many peo­ple have a frame of ref­er­ence for that but as far as big bud­get or small bud­get, you just have to make sense and be real and be truthful.

Do you think being a hip­ster is an actu­al thing or is it a non­sense construction?

It’s prob­a­bly a bit of both. There is kind of like a mind­set of appro­pri­at­ing his­to­ry but at the same time I don’t think any­one can real­ly judge any­body or, cer­tain­ly, label them as some­thing. I don’t know what makes hip­sters so I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you.

It seems like you’re wary of pop cul­tur­al trends.

When­ev­er a large group of peo­ple sud­den­ly feel like, ​‘We’re all going to do this thing’ there’s some­thing in my DNA that nev­er seemS to want to go that route. It just seems to close you off to so many oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties. I’m not say­ing that as a prophet or some­one who’s good at prac­tic­ing that. I am more skep­ti­cal of things that are mass-produced.

Are you con­cerned about nav­i­gat­ing Hollywood?

I’m still at the begin­ning… I don’t know if it’s even fair to say that I’m at the begin­ning because I could be at the end of a career. For me to say that I’ll nev­er do a cer­tain thing because there’s no val­ue in it, it isn’t real­ly up to what­ev­er the form is. There is some val­ue in doing some­thing that you maybe don’t under­stand but you tried that expe­ri­ence and you know what you like and don’t like about it. I have opin­ions about all the Hol­ly­wood movies that I see that just suck. There are so many of them and, god, you can rail against them and they’re not real­ly about cre­at­ing any­thing, they’re about sell­ing some­thing and that’s ter­ri­ble. I feel no pres­sure to do any of that but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t smart direc­tors that are still try­ing to find a smart way to work with­in a stu­dio sys­tem. It doesn’t real­ly mat­ter the size of the film or if it’s a car­toon movie about fox­es or what­ev­er. If there’s an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter and I feel like the peo­ple around it are real­ly after some­thing and I’m lucky enough to get the job then that’s pret­ty great and the struc­ture around it doesn’t matter.

Are you good at read­ing from the out­set whether the peo­ple and mate­r­i­al involved chime with what you’re after?

I feel like I just have an impulse about some­thing, and I usu­al­ly do no-brain­ers. If you get asked, ​‘Do you want to do a movie with the Coen broth­ers?’ That’s a no-brain­er. ​‘Do you want to work with Mar­tin Scors­ese?’ Sure. I’ve been for­tu­nate to be put in a lot of sit­u­a­tions where the peo­ple involved just seem to do the work for me. Or not the work for me, but it just made the choic­es obvi­ous ones. I’m a bit thick, so if I feel myself being wishy-washy about some­thing then it’s hard to commit.

You’re not thick. Why do you say that?

You can take things too seri­ous­ly and sud­den­ly you take your­self too seri­ous­ly and it’s good to be light even though the world is dark and we all die alone. It’s a tricky thing to spend your life balancing.

Is your grow­ing star pro­file play­ing hav­oc with this bal­anc­ing act?

I try to stay detached from all that and try to not let any­thing get in the way of being a per­son. It’s not real­ly my job to make it about myself. There are oth­er peo­ple involved. My wife keeps me very ground­ed. I’m also a straight, white male so I’ve had more oppor­tu­ni­ties than oth­er peo­ple, com­plete­ly unjust­ly, so you put it in per­spec­tive. I’m, like, sur­round­ed by real­ly inspir­ing peo­ple so I try to focus on that as much as pos­si­ble. I say that, but that’s a real­ly hard thing to prac­tice, espe­cial­ly when you lose your anonymi­ty and sud­den­ly you start think­ing that you have some­thing impor­tant to say or every­thing gets way too seri­ous. It’s not real­ly about any of that. I don’t know what it is about. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out what it is that I’m doing and what act­ing means. Who knows if it means anything?

It sounds like you’re talk­ing about the sweet spot at the core, which is your actu­al rea­son for doing things, which you’re still try­ing to fig­ure out.

Mar­tin Scors­ese has been doing it for so long but you still see that dri­ve to fig­ure it out, do it bet­ter, do things more eco­nom­i­cal­ly, go a lit­tle deep­er, take it less seri­ous­ly or take it more seri­ous­ly. A great thing about being an actor and why actors hope­ful­ly get to do what they do for a long time is because you nev­er get to fig­ure it out. There’s a con­stant inves­ti­ga­tion that is both – when I see it in old­er actors – excit­ing and real­ly ter­ri­fy­ing because one, you nev­er fig­ure any­thing out and that’s great and two, you nev­er fig­ure any­thing out and that’s petrifying.

On the one hand you have elo­quent the­o­ries of what it all means but on the oth­er hand you’re like ​‘maybe it means nothing’.

Like life.

Yeah!

It fuckin’ sucks! I got to talk to a woman in the church in the Domini­can sect of Catholi­cism and she was say­ing that it’s all a big risk. She’s devot­ed her life to some­thing that could very much not be true. Maybe it’s all about enjoy­ing the expe­ri­ence which… I don’t enjoy either. I feel like the best part of the job – and maybe you relate to this as a writer – is get­ting the job. Then, it’s all sec­ond-guess­ing your­self and doubt and the anguish at doing at.

It’s also enjoy­able when work is accept­ed by oth­ers. Is that the same for you?

It’s bet­ter than peo­ple say­ing that they don’t like it and they’re not going to give you a job, but at the same time, not to sound com­plete­ly joy­less, some­times peo­ple offer inter­pre­ta­tions that are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to the way you were work­ing. It’s good, but you always have to take it with a grain of salt. You didn’t get there alone. Well, maybe you did, prob­a­bly, more so than oth­er peo­ple because you’re a writer, but for me I’m sup­port­ed by writ­ing, direct­ing, light­ing, edit­ing, you know – thank god! It’s all so peo­ple can’t see the mis­takes and you can pass around the respon­si­bil­i­ty. But yeah, I’m sound­ing like a total fuck­ing pes­simist. When peo­ple respond to your work, who am I kid­ding, that feels real­ly great and that’s good and grat­i­fy­ing, but it’s not real­ly any­thing you can hang your hat on. You can’t look for oth­er people’s praise to push you for­ward because that’s also a trap.

Sor­ry for that real­ly high-pitched laugh. It was because of the dra­mat­ic way you said ​‘total fuck­ing pessimist’.

No, that’s okay. I’m so in my head with what I’m say­ing I didn’t even hear.

Great. I’ll just release occa­sion­al laughs in the secu­ri­ty that…

No. I’m lying, I did hear it and I’m judg­ing you.

You say you’re real­ly pes­simistic but that can’t be the whole truth. When you’re in a good rela­tion­ship, sure­ly that brings some lightness?

If you’re lucky, because I feel like a lot of peo­ple don’t have that in their life – even in that I’ve scored a jack­pot, even with my friends who chal­lenge me. A weird thing that I’m learn­ing about act­ing is that the more you get to do, the more pub­lic you become. Anonymi­ty and being a spy is what your job is, so sud­den­ly to feel like you can’t par­tic­i­pate in things is tricky. It’s impor­tant to make mis­takes, to be a fail­ure and to live reck­less­ly. That’s why it was kind of dif­fi­cult at first to relate to Jamie. That mind­set of inter­con­nect­ed­ness, shar­ing every­thing and being so out there and open, for me – and I can only speak for myself because some peo­ple are bet­ter devel­oped – it’s not my impulse, because who gives a shit. And also, that’s your stuff. Feel­ing the pres­sure to make things per­fect or apol­o­gise or watch what you say or just how scary the inter­net it and how wild­ly inac­cu­rate it almost all is, it can make you real­ly want to not be a per­son. It’s a tricky thing. In the past cou­ple of years, and now, I’m still find­ing a way to nav­i­gate. I’m not on the inter­net real­ly, like social media. The internet’s a crazy place and just the way our cul­ture is – phones and shit like that. It’s a tricky thing to still be a per­son and do my job.

Are you more like Jamie than Josh in the sense that you try to make your life about phys­i­cal things rather than dig­i­tal ones?

Yeah, it’s also because I just don’t under­stand com­put­ers. My thumbs are real­ly just too big. If I had skin­nier thumbs I think I would be more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy. It just gets me real­ly frus­trat­ed try­ing to type so many things. It takes me just dou­ble the time to do it. If I had skin­nier fin­gers I would have a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent phi­los­o­phy so that’s why I think I like tac­tile things.

How big exact­ly are your thumbs?

They’re big. I wish I could show you.

Can you give me a house­hold object of com­pa­ra­ble size?

A bas­ket­ball.