The latest issue of W Magazine features a look at the actors behind some of the most compelling film performances of the year.
One actor who is impossible to overlook is Adam Driver, who’s coming off a banner year that saw him win critical acclaim in two Netflix dramas — “Marriage Story” and “The Report” — while winding down his “Star Wars” role as villainous Kylo Ren in “The Rise of Skywalker”.
In the interview, Driver, 36, discussed how he came to be involved in “Marriage Story”.
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“Noah Baumbach, the writer and director of ‘Marriage Story’, and I have been friends since I was cast in his film ‘Frances Ha’, in 2011,” he explained. “We’d have dinner, and the conversation always evolved into what project are we going to do next? For a while, we talked about a movie version of ‘Company’, the Stephen Sondheim musical. It’s kind of a weird musical, and we couldn’t figure out how to film it. Eventually, Noah wrote ‘Marriage Story’, which he saw as a love story told through the lens of a divorce. And I sing ‘Being Alive’ from ‘Company’ in the film.”
Driver has previously insisted that he refuses to watch himself onscreen, and he told W Magazine that was also the case with “Marriage Story”. Asked if he had seen it, he admitted, “No. I can’t do it.”
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In addition, Driver was asked to recall the scenes he selected when he auditioned for Juilliard. “The opening monologue of ‘Richard III’, because it was the only Shakespeare play I knew,” he divulged. “And a monologue I can’t recall from a random book that I found at Barnes & Noble. And you had to sing a song, and I chose ‘Happy Birthday’. I said if I wasn’t accepted, I would go live in Central Park, build a hut or something. Luckily, they let me in.”
