Adam Driver speaks to Brut

Brut America

From playing the villain in Star Wars to why “making a movie is like taking a piss,” Adam Driver gets candid with Brut at the Festival de Cannes.

Transcript

00:00As an actor, your job is to kind of be invisible in a way.

00:05You're supposed to watch and be a spy,

00:07and live life and have the experience,

00:09and make mistakes, and when suddenly that attention's on you

00:14it makes you self-conscious in a way that,

00:17or just the idea that any actor or celebrity

00:21somehow has an opinion on global affairs,

00:24that it's a given weight, but I don't know

00:27how you cope with that, I think maybe it's just not

00:30to take it too seriously.

00:32How do you find the body, the gestures of a character?

00:36Well, it kind of comes from different things, I think.

00:39It depends on what the script is,

00:41and sometimes it's something that you add on top of it,

00:44and sometimes it's pretty obvious.

00:46Sometimes a costume piece, I think, affects a character.

00:50Sometimes it happens before you start shooting anything,

00:54and sometimes it happens two weeks into the shooting already.

00:58It's mostly from the script, I'd say.

01:01You know, I'm thinking of this beautiful entrance

01:03as a stand-up comedian in Annette.

01:05How did you compose this body?

01:09Well, we talked about him being very lean

01:12and kind of like sinewy.

01:14You know, he's smoking cigarettes, but he's also eating a banana,

01:17so there's already some kind of...

01:20almost he's commenting on health, you know.

01:23And it's an athletic thing, his show,

01:26so you kind of get the sense that he is comfortable with movement.

01:31But how we found the entrance,

01:35it was really a combination of a lot of different things.

01:39You know, he's got a lot of muscles,

01:41but the entrance was really a combination of instinct and choreography.

01:47That's what Léos does really well.

01:49You know, it's very interesting, because when I interviewed Léos,

01:51he told me acting, according to him,

01:53had to do with a balance between chaos and precision.

01:57Oh, yeah, that's a great way of describing it.

01:59That's how he coins it.

02:01When did you first embrace chaos as an actor?

02:04Do you remember?

02:06No, I didn't have that moment.

02:08I think you have to,

02:10but sometimes I'm more comfortable with it than other times.

02:12Sometimes a scene kind of leans towards you having to embrace it.

02:19And sometimes, you know, you kind of want something more structural.

02:23I mean, you're not only...

02:25It's odd that you're making this thing that you're capturing once,

02:29that is going to live forever, and you're only doing it once.

02:32You don't really often have the time to rehearse it,

02:35so a lot of your first impulses wind up making it

02:38into a form that's very strict once it's done.

02:43You know, it's pretty rigid, actually.

02:45And then as you're making it,

02:47not only do you have to compete with your impulses,

02:49but you're competing with technology.

02:51You know, and time. Always time.

02:53I was wondering, do all the movies accept chaos?

02:55Can you let go the same way in an independent movie,

02:58say a Jim Jarmusch movie,

03:00and in a huge franchise like Star Wars?

03:03Yeah, it's just different ways of...

03:06Even, I mean, it depends on what your definition of chaos is.

03:09You just referenced Jim Jarmusch,

03:12which, you know, we did this movie,

03:15Patterson, which is very...

03:17He's a very cerebral character.

03:19But from take to take, you know,

03:21my version of chaos is just not knowing what's going to happen.

03:24But that doesn't necessarily have to be in a big, physical, obvious way.

03:28It could be very internal, like having a different thought

03:31that leads you to it can be chaotic, you know,

03:34because you don't know where you're going.

03:36But then there's things like Star Wars,

03:39which are more obvious, you know, set pieces.

03:42They're more external, the chaos.

03:44There's visual effects in a lot of moving pieces,

03:47but it doesn't make it any less chaotic.

03:49It just makes it maybe...

03:51It depends on what your definition of chaos is.

03:54So I like this phrase that you often quote making a movie.

03:58It's like having to take a piss.

04:00It's so urgent. I love that.

04:02What do you mean by that exactly?

04:04That it has to come from a place of need and be urgent.

04:08You know, it's a lot of effort to get to a place,

04:11to get a lot of money together, to get...

04:14I mean, even this is something on a small scale,

04:17but you have three cameras or four cameras.

04:19Everyone picked out their clothes.

04:21You know, they got makeup.

04:23You hear hours, and you're considering it

04:25because you, you know, believe.

04:27And it's a lot of effort to do this thing.

04:29It makes it easier and I think maybe more gratifying

04:32if it feels that urgent that you have to do it, you know?

04:35As an actor, what remains of the army man,

04:37of the soldier that you used to be?

04:39I think in the military,

04:41I learned a lot about working as a unit.

04:44You know, it's like a team...

04:46It's a team sport, making a film.

04:49It doesn't really rest on one person.

04:51And making sure that you're doing your job

04:54in support of everybody else's job

04:56is how they're very similar.

04:58So I think I took that from it.

05:00Would you say sometimes making a movie is a mission?

05:02A military mission?

05:04Sometimes, yeah.

05:06What movies are you talking about?

05:08All movies. All movies are always a mess.

05:11It's a miracle that any movie gets made.

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