Adam Douglas Driver (born November 19, 1983) is an American actor. Recognized for his collaborations with auteur filmmakers, he is the recipient of various accolades, including nominations for two Academy Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Tony Award, making him one of few performers nominated for the Triple Crown of Acting.
Driver made his Broadway debut in Mrs. Warren's Profession (2010) and subsequently appeared in Man and Boy (2011). He rose to prominence with a supporting role in the HBO comedy-drama series Girls (2012–2017), for which he received three consecutive Primetime Emmy nominations. Driver began his film career in supporting roles in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha (2012), and the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). He won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his lead role in the drama Hungry Hearts (2014).
Driver gained wider recognition for playing Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019). He starred as a poet in Jim Jarmusch's Paterson (2016), and had supporting roles in Martin Scorsese's religious epic Silence (2016) and Steven Soderbergh's heist comedy Logan Lucky (2017). In 2019, he returned to the stage in the Broadway revival of Burn This, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He garnered consecutive Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Best Actor for Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story (2019). He has since starred in Ridley Scott's period films The Last Duel and House of Gucci (both 2021), and Baumbach's satire White Noise (2022).
Driver is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He is also the founder of Arts in the Armed Forces, a non-profit that provides free arts programming to American active-duty service members, veterans, military support staff, and their families worldwide.
Early life :
Driver as a U.S. Marine in 2002
Driver was born on November 19, 1983, in San Diego, California, the son of Nancy Wright (née Needham), a paralegal, and Joe Douglas Driver. He has Dutch, English, German, Irish and Scottish ancestry.[better source needed] His father's family is from Arkansas and his mother's family is from Indiana. His stepfather, Rodney G. Wright, is a minister at a Baptist church. When Driver was seven years old, he moved with his older sister and mother to his mother's hometown Mishawaka, Indiana, where he graduated from Mishawaka High School in 2001. Driver was raised Baptist, and sang in the choir at church.
Driver has described his teenage self as a "misfit"; he told M Magazine that he climbed radio towers, set objects on fire, and co-founded a fight club with friends, inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club. After high school, he worked as a door-to-door salesman selling Kirby vacuum cleaners and as a telemarketer for a basement waterproofing company and Ben Franklin Construction. He applied to the Juilliard School for drama but was not accepted.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Driver enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was assigned to Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines as an 81mm mortar man. He served for two years and eight months before fracturing his sternum while mountain biking.He was medically discharged with the rank of Lance Corporal.
Subsequently, Driver attended the University of Indianapolis for a year before auditioning again for Juilliard, this time succeeding. He got the news he was accepted while at work at the Target Distribution Center in Indianapolis. Driver has said that his classmates saw him as an intimidating and volatile figure, and he struggled to fit into a lifestyle so different from the Marines. He was a member of the Drama Division's Group 38 from 2005 to 2009, where he met his future wife, Joanne Tucker. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009.
