When you look at Star Wars and Marriage Story star Adam Driver, you immediately feel a little intimidated due to his large physique and crazy intensity. You get the feeling that he could beat your arse without breaking a sweat if you rubbed him the wrong way or got on his nerves.
While Adam likely won’t beat you up if you make him mad, he most definitely could if he wanted to because he happens to be a trained Marine.
Before Star Wars, an Oscar nomination for Marriage Story, and the name “Adam Driver” being plastered all over Hollywood, Adam had actually failed in getting into the famous Juilliard drama school in New York.
While he knew he wanted to perform, the September 11 attacks prompted a lot of talk among his friends and family about joining the military, and Adam ultimately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after the attack.
While Adam wasn’t an athlete before joining the Marines, he adapted to the culture quite easily as it provided him a sense of comradeship and discipline that he had been lacking in his life up to that point.
Adam ultimately trained for two years (which explains the origins of “Ben Swolo“) and was hoping to deploying with his friends, only to suffer a major setback when he injured himself in a mountain biking accident.
Despite trying to push the injury (not unlike Kylo Ren), Adam was medically discharged from the Marines with the rank of Lance Corporal. After a year of uni, he applied to Juilliard again and managed to get into the school the second time around.
While he took to acting, Adam struggled to fit in with the Juilliard lifestyle as it was so different to the disciplined Marines culture and his classmates were quite intimidated by him. But he ultimately graduated in 2009 and the rest quickly became history as he got onto HBO’s hit show Girls not long after and the world was introduced to “Adam Driver.”
So if you’re intimidated by Adam Driver, well you have a right to be because the man who brought Kylo Ren to life was a goddamn Marine once upon a time and could legit kick your arse. But thankfully for us, any arse kicking is purely for the big screen because while Adam may have been a badarse Marine, he’s an even better actor.
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