Actor Adam Driver is widely celebrated for the sheer diversity of the characters he has played, easily transitioning from one role to the next and seeming to disappear into the people he plays. But when the director calls “that’s a wrap,” the two-time Oscar is generally happy to immediately shed that character and move on to the next part. It’s for this reason that he says he hasn’t been to a wrap party since Lena Dunham’s Girls, the series that shot him to stardom, said goodbye.
And Driver was elated to shed the persona of Maurizio Gucci, the one-time head of the Gucci family’s fashion brand, whom he plays in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci. In an interview with W Magazine, Driver admitted that the role was one of his toughest to date.
“I do not live in the same world as Maurizio Gucci,” Driver said. “The way he picks up things that are valuable and discards them, the way he is the most elegant man—those qualities were interesting to think about. But after 14 hours a day of being a Gucci, I was ready for it to be over.”
This cut-and-run tendency had become a bit of a habit for the actor. “In general, I leave jobs immediately,” he said. “I haven’t been to a wrap party since Girls. I just want to get the character out of my system and go home.”
Which might explain why taking on a recurring role in one of the biggest movie franchises in the history of cinema has been stressful for Driver, who refuses to watch himself onscreen. Back in November, as the New York Post reported, Driver told Graham Norton about how surreal some of what he has experienced as a key character in Star Wars has been.
When Norton asked whether Comic-Con was a fun time for Driver, his answer was an unequivocal “no.”
“I didn’t know the rules of Comic-Con,” he explained. “I got in at the hotel at two in the morning … and I’m like, ‘Maybe tomorrow I’ll go get a coffee.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh no, you can’t get a coffee.’ I’m like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll get a coffee in the hotel.’ They’re like, ‘No, you can’t get a coffee in the hotel.’”
Driver was told that if he wanted to venture outside for any reason, he would need to put on some sort of cosplay-y, Comic-Con-appropriate mask so that he wouldn’t be recognized, or mobbed. But it turned out that even just opening his hotel room window could also be a bit jarring.
“I opened my window because I’d been in the room for 24 hours before this thing we were supposed to do, and then there was a band at the bottom of the building playing the Star Wars theme on repeat, because [the cast was] all staying in the hotel,” Driver continued. “It was scary … I mean, it’s nice… [But] I’m not anxious to go again.”
(Via W Magazine)
