When I look at Adam Driver I’ll always think of his role in Girls. It’s as simple as that. That who I associate him with best and that’s the role that opened the door to the tremendous success he has in film right now. Most of the newer generation of fans know him as Kylo Ren from the Star Wars franchise but did you know that Adam Driver was once a marine? Turns out he joined the marines at the young age of 18 only months after 9/11. According to a New York Times article published in 2011,
The moment that persuaded Adam Driver to pursue an acting career didn’t come when he was cast as the Leading Player in a college production of “Pippin,” or even when he was accepted to Juilliard. It happened one thankfully windy afternoon as a cloud of deadly white phosphorus – a high-powered chemical that can burn through cars – inched its way toward him and a group of fellow Marines during a mishap in a California training exercise.
“They fired on us as opposed to the target,” said Mr. Driver, who joined the military at 18, a few months after 9/11. “That was the first time in training anything life or death had ever happened. We all ran. If it wasn’t windy that day we would have been dead.”
He laughed before continuing: “I made up my mind then that I wanted to smoke cigarettes and pursue acting. When you get out of the Marine Corps you think you can do anything.” He stuck to his plan (minus the cigarettes).
The article is an interested read because it’s literally when he was first cast as Adam in Girls and the article refers to Lena Dunham as “Ms. Dunham.” It’s a fun walk down memory lane.
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