Adam Driver ticks all the right boxes for a Hollywood muse: he has an admirable physique, outstanding acting skills, and a mysterious personality. While he has inspired a multitude of film directors over the course of his career, it wasn’t until recent years that the actor stepped into the limelight. Now, he is making his fashion world debut as the spokesperson of Burberry’s men’s fragrance Burberry Hero. Upon the highly-anticipated release of crime biopic House of Gucci, Driver shares with us what masculinity means to him and the memories that scent can evoke.
The actor was in the middle of his promotional tour for the House of Gucci premiere when he took the interview. Widely recognised as a laudable actor, Driver has played muse to many talented film directors like Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach, Spike Lee, and Martin Scorsese. Now, under the camera of Ridley Scott, Driver’s performance as Maurizio Gucci in House of Gucci is another testament to his abilities. “Every single role is a challenge for me,” Driver said frankly, “After I got the part, I was happy for the first 30 minutes. Then, reality hit me. I thought to myself ‘Oh no, I actually have to bring the character to life.’ In Marriage Story, I had to keep myself in an extremely emotionally vulnerable state, which definitely took a toll. House of Gucci, on the other hand, is built on a true story and challenges each actor to reimagine history, which is something that everybody involved in the film had to prepare for.”
Anyone who knows even a little about Adam Driver’s acting background will agree that he has never taken his identity as an actor for granted. Out of all the roads that could’ve led him to fame, Driver chose to embark on a long and winding journey. Born into a pious Baptist family, he grew up surrounded by religious traditions. After experiencing the events of 9/11 at the age of 18, he signed up for the U.S. Armed Forces and served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Discharged two years later due to health reasons, he enrolled himself into Julliard for acting. In his interviews, he revealed that his enthusiasm for acting was always there, but he never made up his mind about pursuing it. At that point in his life, acting provided Driver a means to express the complex emotions he carried within him.
Although his military experience and masculine aura would have made it easy for him to break into Hollywood, Driver pursued an alternate path. He was careful about the roles he chose to take on from the very beginning of his career. The actor built his presence through starring in independent stage plays, but it was not until 2012 that the HBO series “Girls” ushered in his first mainstream role. Since then, Driver has participated in a number of independently produced films that have won praise at international film festivals: Italian director Saverio Costanzo’s Hungry Hearts, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories — all of which have shaped him as an actor. JJ Abrams’s Star Wars series marked a turning point in Driver’s career: he made his first step onto Hollywood’s red carpet and soon became a familiar face in magazines.
Driver has become the topic of many discussions due to his advertisement for Burberry Hero, in which he showed off his toned physique. While Burberry Hero is a men’s fragrance, Creative Director Riccardo Tisci hopes that the fragrance can break traditional male stereotypes by “displaying modern masculinity through playing with the primitive instincts of humans and animals, and creating a juxtaposition between power and touch.” To Tisci, the idea of “sexy” is no longer physical, but rather a marriage between sensitivity and sensuality, one that characterises the essence of Burberry Hero.
As an actor, Driver defines what it means to break stereotypes. While his antagonistic character in Star Wars garnered plenty of attention, it was his ordinariness in Paterson, vulnerability in Marriage Story and helplessness in Hungry Hearts that touched people’s hearts. Now, he takes on another challenge as he enters the glamorous world of the Gucci family as Maurizio Gucci, who was tangled in a feud with his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani. “He is a real character. His hair, his glasses and his suit — all these details tell a story of his past. Behind his five minute dialogue is a historical narrative that cannot be entirely captured by the film. Yet these very details explain why this character chose to speak the words that he spoke. The whole team has put a lot of effort into accurately expressing the truth of each scene.”
House of Gucci marks Driver’s first foray into the world of fashion, while Burberry Hero is Creative Director Riccardo Tisci’s first scent for the brand. These two “firsts”, in Driver’s words, are a “happy accident”. “A wave of nostalgia hits me whenever I smell burning wood, it reminds me of my childhood days on the beaches of California. Although I live in Brooklyn Heights now, it is easy to catch a whiff of burning wood from people’s fireplaces while walking on the street in winter. This scent brings me back to different moments in my life.” Coincidentally, Burberry Hero is a woody fragrance: warm cedarwood oils from the Appalachians, the Atlas Mountains and the Himalayas comprise its base notes, while its scent is enriched by Juniper Berries and Bergamot. “This coincidence is such a happy accident, just like my life.”
In Hollywood, a world filled with unspoken rules, there are not many actors who can make a breakthrough. While it may have taken ten years, Driver is exactly where he is supposed to be.
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Ahy ChoiCredit
Lead Image: Courtesy of Burberry
