I think some of my best theatre training has been in the Marine Corps. Not only meeting a bunch of characters, but growing up. You’re in really adult situations at a young age, as far as being in charge of people. – Adam Driver
By the time I got into Juilliard, I was working at a Target distribution warehouse. It didn’t make anything, it just shipped things, and my job was just to stand there and look at the security codes on the back of trucks and see if they would lock, and check them in. – Adam Driver
The first job I got was this TV job in this show called ‘The Unusuals.’ Then I did a play called ‘Slipping,’ and at the same time I was rehearsing another play at Playwrights Horizons, and that kind of snowballed into a bunch of plays. – Adam Driver
The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people’s lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it. – Adam Driver
Yeah, September 11 happened and all my friends were like, ‘Let’s join the military!’ and I was the only one who actually did. – Adam Driver
Acting is a business and a political act and a craft, but I also feel like it’s a service – specifically, for a military audience. – Adam Driver
Obviously, ‘Lincoln’ is not about the telegraph operator. There’s a whole other movie before and after the two isolated scenes that I’m in. – Adam Driver
Something I learned in the Marine Corps that I’ve applied to acting is, one, taking direction, and then working with a group of people to accomplish a mission and knowing your role within that team. – Adam Driver
I did plays in high school, but I was convinced you couldn’t make a living doing it. You don’t have a lot of options in Indiana anyway, though, so I didn’t want to stay there. I graduated early and worked a bunch of really odd jobs, and then I joined the Marines. – Adam Driver
For me, becoming a man had a lot to do with learning communication, and I learned about that by acting. – Adam Driver
If I’m not doing something or working on something, I literally just sit in the room and think, which I don’t think is productive. I won’t go outside for days. – Adam Driver
My only close-to-game-plan is to follow good writing. If the writing is in TV or if it’s in theater or in film, that’s it. It doesn’t really matter what the medium is. – Adam Driver
There were definitely dark nights when you’re like, ‘Maybe joining the military wasn’t such a good idea.’ But, in a way, it was the best training to be an actor. – Adam Driver
What is a struggle is that acting isn’t a place where you go to work and you do that thing. There aren’t set boundaries, like an office, where you go and work. For me, the work is always on my mind. – Adam Driver
My grandpa was in the Navy, but it wasn’t something that was expected or planned for me to do. – Adam Driver
I never played sports or got into the whole guy camaraderie of, like, ‘I love you, man! Seniors forever!’ So suddenly being in the military with these guys who were under these very heightened circumstances, isolated from their families, living this very kind of Greek lifestyle, it changed my life in a really big way. – Adam Driver
With ‘Girls’… I feel like there’s an impulse to try to make it look better or neater or more perfect, and when I watch theater, television, movies, it’s always the imperfection I’m always more attracted to. – Adam Driver
I’m constantly thinking about the role, and there’s an infinite amount of questions you can ask yourself about a character to the point that it’s hard to find the boundaries of when to not work. – Adam Driver
I loved being in the Marine Corps, I loved my job in the Marine Corps, and I loved the people I served with. It’s one of the best things I’ve had a chance to do. – Adam Driver
I’m one of those crazy people, if I’m watching the trailer for a movie and I’m really excited by it, I’ll turn it off because I don’t want to know anything. I want to be surprised because I love that more than knowing anything. – Adam Driver
How do you take what you do as seriously as possible but not so seriously that it ends up inhibiting what you do? – Adam Driver
I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it’s such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse. – Adam Driver
