In New York during a 2005 talk, American actor Adam Driver talked about his life, his experience as a US Marine and how he finally ended up in the acting world.
He lived with his parents in Mishawaka, Indiana city, United States until he was 17 years old, and he had several jobs, such as a vacuum cleaner salesman, telemarketer and he even mowed the grass in the neighborhood. Not quite sure what he wanted to do after finishing high school, he applied to Juilliard School, but was rejected.
Therefore, at age eighteen, and after the September 11 attacks, he decided to join the Marines out of patriotism and retribution, where he was assigned to the Infantry and served there for almost three years. "It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my life," he says. When he suffered an accident while mountain biking and dislocated his sternum, he was forced to leave the Corps and not remain in the Iraq war. This was devastating for him. "The transition from being a Marine to a civilian was complex (...) I didn't know how to apply the things that I had learned in a military context, in my daily life as a civilian."
“I struggle to find meaning. In the military, everything has meaning, and everything you do has a purpose, your rank distinguishes you because you are someone with experience... in the world of civilians there is no rank, you are simply a body. The respect that civilians gave me when I was in uniform did not exist when I was no longer wearing it. I felt there was no sense of community”.
During his search for a meaning in life, he auditioned again for Juilliard, and this time he was admitted. He eventually found that meaning through acting. He discovered characters and stories that made him able to explain his military experience, something that had previously been indescribable for him. "I was able to put word to feelings," he says.
He also highlighted several parallels between military and acting: “we are part of something much bigger; each one has their role and you must learn to do it, learn to work as a team. Each team has a leader or director (…) One is forced to establish very close ties in a very short period of time”. And he closes "Acting can be many things, but it is also a service, like the military".
Where can we see him?
In the thriller The Report, based on actual events, with Annette Bening and directed by Scott Z. Burns. Senator Feinstein (Bening) makes Jones (Driver) the leader of an investigation into the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, created after the 9/11 attacks. Jones is making astonishing findings that reveal the extent to which the intelligence agency destroyed evidence and withheld a monstrous secret from the entire country.
Another option is Logan Lucky, where he, Daniel Craig, and Channing Tatum plan to steal millions of dollars during one of the biggest Nascar racing events of the year. Will they make it?
