How Adam Driver prepared for an emotionally draining scene in ‘Marriage Story’
Over the last decade, Adam Driver has developed a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most esteemed actors. Bringing an unrivalled intensity to his roles, the Julliard graduate owes much of his success to director Noah Baumbach, who gave him a supporting role in his 2012 feature Frances Ha before handing him a leading role in 2019’s Marriage Story, a film that allowed Driver to showcase his dizzying control of emotion.
Born in San Diego, California, Adam Driver stepped into acting after a stint in the US Army. After being medically discharged following an injury, he attended university before dropping out to take a place on the acting course at New York’s prestigious Julliard School. On graduating, he took on numerous roles on Broadway and landed a role in Lena Dunham’s hit series Girls, which saw him star as Hannah’s love interest, Adam Sackler. The show marked a watershed moment in Driver’s career, serving as a springboard for modest roles in films such as Inside Llewyn Davis and Frances Ha, which in turn led to leading roles in 2014’s This Is Where I Leave You, 2015’s Star Wars VII and Martin Scorsese’s 2016 picture Silence.
Despite having already achieved mainstream success, Driver continued to take on roles in indie and arthouse features such as Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson and, of course, Marriage Story. Released in 2019, this portrait of a marriage in the midst of implosion focuses on Charlie, a revered theatre director, and his wife Nicole, a movie actress. After attending several failed marriage counselling sessions, the couple agree to go their separate ways. However, what starts out as an amicable agreement based on mutual respect gradually morphs into a deluge of costly lawyers and cruel revelations.
One of the film’s most painful moments comes after Nicole and Charlie decide to go to Charlie’s apartment to talk things through without the influence of lawyers. The conversation quickly breaks down into a vengeful argument in which Charlie tells his ex-wife: “Every day I wake up and I hope you’re dead, dead like, if I could guarantee Henry would be okay, I hope that you’d get an illness, that you’d get hit by a car and die.” It’s an incredibly powerful piece of acting, not least because Driver’s emotion appears to swell up against his will.
Discussing the scene during an actor’s round table with The Hollywood Reporter, Driver explained how he prepared himself for that level of emotion. “It’s not something you push for,” he began. “You don’t push for emotion. It either happens, or it doesn’t. I don’t think you can anticipate it; otherwise, nothing happens. But there are a lot of things, in that instance, that are supporting you. The script is so good, and it’s well written. If it’s badly written, there’s only one way to do it. If it’s well-written, the language is so rich that every time you try [the dialogue], it opens up an idea for something else. The text is the text, and I find that incredibly freeing because your intention could be anything. If it’s just ‘have an emotion’, I don’t think I could do that.”
