Adam Driver can make a slow reply funny without making the speaker a fool. We value that care, and the tension in his stillness, though his determination to take every part seriously sometimes makes for a long evening.
Fi1m perspective
In Logan Lucky (2017), Adam Driver lets Clyde Logan take his time over a sentence without asking us to laugh at how slowly he thinks. Clyde tends bar with one hand and believes his family is cursed. Steven Soderbergh gives him room to be funny, and Driver never confuses slowness with stupidity. We warmed to him because Clyde is so often right, and Driver gives that judgement the same unhurried delivery. It is a good place to start with an actor whose seriousness can be funny when a director lets it.
The move from Adam Sackler in Girls (2012–2017) to Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019) made his intensity familiar on a much larger scale. His work with Jim Jarmusch and Noah Baumbach offers another way to watch him. In Paterson (2016), small gestures and repetition reveal the person; Marriage Story (2019) gives him extended scenes in which complicated feelings can develop. He benefits from directors who allow him that time.
In Michael Mann's Ferrari (2023), that restraint becomes tiring. His Enzo Ferrari wears dark glasses and a grey suit, and gives almost nothing away. We understand the choice to keep the man's grief private, but there are stretches when we want Driver to do anything at all. Erik Messerschmidt shoots the road rushing towards us, Pietro Scalia keeps each car easy to follow and Daniel Pemberton's score gives way to the engines. The racing has the urgency missing from the talky domestic scenes.
65 (2023) shows the other risk: he can take a thin part more seriously than it deserves. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods make his stranded pilot Mills trudge through a prehistoric forest, and Driver supplies care, fatigue and a convincing shout at a dinosaur. His exchanges with Ariana Greenblatt, working out words through drawings in the dirt, briefly give the film some warmth. Salvatore Totino's murky forest and Kevin Ishioka's cracked, half-buried ship provide a credible place for him to struggle. The script gives him too little beyond struggle.
Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis (2024) gives him Cesar Catilina, an architect proposing a city of the future, in a film too muddled for us to recommend. Its sincerity earns some goodwill, but we would not choose it as an introduction to Driver. For an evening with him, we would start with Clyde and his family curse.
Biography
Adam Driver is an American actor. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 2009 and began his career in theatre, making his Broadway debut in Mrs. Warren's Profession (2010).
His breakout role was as Adam Sackler in the HBO series Girls (2012–2017), for which he received three Primetime Emmy nominations. He gained wider recognition as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019). Driver has appeared in films including Lincoln (2012), BlacKkKlansman (2018), Marriage Story (2019) and The Last Duel (2021).
His credits include Clyde Logan in Logan Lucky (2017), Mills in 65 (2023), Enzo Ferrari in Ferrari (2023) and Cesar Catilina in Megalopolis (2024). He received Academy Award nominations for BlacKkKlansman and Marriage Story, and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for Hungry Hearts (2014). On stage, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Burn This (2019).
