Adam Driver recalls being in the Marines

CEBU, Philippines -  “This kid is going to be one of the most formidable actors of his generation.”

Director Shawn Levy has high praise for Adam Driver, star of  the upcoming movie “This Is Where I Leave You” and GQ’s September 2014 issue cover feature. Driver, who found fame via HBO’s “Girls,” is dismissive of such praise. “That’s nice of Shawn,” he says. “He’s the kind of person who believes things will turn out good.”

Whether he believes it or not, Driver is currently one of the most sought after actors in Hollywood. The actor, 30, will next appear in Jeff  Nichols’ “Midnight Special,” Noah Baumbach’s  “While We’re Young” and Martin Scorsese’s “Silence.” Oh, and Driver has been cast in J.J. Abrams’ top-secret “Star Wars: Episode VII.”

The son of devout Baptists, Driver sang in the church choir but also ran a fight club. He’s reluctant to talk about his upbringing, however. “If I can, I’ll skip the parents stuff,” the actor says. “We have different views on the world. They have their life; I have mine.”

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Driver decided to enlist in the armed forces. “It just seemed like a badass thing to do, to go and shoot machine guns and serve your country,” he recalls. Driver was shipped off to Camp Pendleton in California. “It’s hard to describe,” he says of his rigorous Marines training. “You’re put in these very heightened circumstances, and you learn a lot about who people are at the core. You end up having this very intimate relationship where you would die for these people.”

Driver never made it to war, however. Two years into his training, he broke his sternum on a mountain bike. As a result, he was medically discharged. To this day, being sent home early is very difficult for Driver to accept. “To not get to go with that group of people I had been training with was painful.”

He moved back to Indiana but yearned for a challenge. Though he’d been rejected before he enlisted, he reapplied to the Juilliard School in New York City. “The Marine Corps is supposed to be the toughest and most rigorous of its class,” he says. Similarly, Juilliard offers a highly competitive program. “Obviously the stakes are different. You have the risk of getting shot or killed in one and just embarrassed in the other. I thought, ‘This will be easy.’”

After his classes began, he drifted apart from his friends in the Marines. “We all got together in Texas; a friend of ours had passed away,” the “What If” star remembers. “And I was trying to explain to them what I was doing at Juilliard. I’m like, ‘Yeah, we wear pajamas, and we talk about our inner colors, and there was this exercise where we all gave birth to ourselves...’ And they’re like, ‘What are you doing?”

What do the Marines  think of his foray into acting? “They were like, ‘So, I saw your show,’” Driver says, imitating his pals. “And you’re naked a lot. Tell me when the next thing comes out.’”

The Marines remain close to his heart. With the help of classmate Joanne Tucker, whom he later married, he created Arts in the Armed Forces, which deploys actors to perform at military bases. Driver continues to operate the organization today, as he knows how difficult life can be for those in service.