6 Things You Didn't Know About Adam Driver

Adam Driver used to be in the military.

Driver joined the Marines shortly after the 9/11 attacks, and he worked his way up to Lance corporal. After graduating from high school, he had actually planned to go to the Julliard School for drama, but he had been rejected and later chose to join the Marines. Driver served for two years and eight months before dislocating his sternum while mountain biking before deploying. He was then medically discharged.

During his Actor Roundtable with Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Jamie Foxx, Shia LaBeouf, and Adam Sandler, Driver explained how his time in the Marines prepped him for his acting career:

"Well, with one the stakes are life-and-death and with the other you're pretending they are. But the process in which you work on them is the exact same. It's a group of people trying to accomplish a mission that's bigger than any one person. You have a role and you have to know your role within a gun team. You're only as good as the people that are there with youand when they know what they're doing, what you're doing feels active and relevant and exciting. And when they don't, it feels like a waste of resources and dangerous. That was the best acting training, actually, because you're just so aware that you're one part of a bigger picture."

Driver later co-founded the non-profit organization Arts in the Armed Forces with his wife. AITAF helps to bring free arts programming to active-duty service members, veterans, and their families.

The actor is married with one child.

Driver is extremely private, and when he got married to actress Joanne Tucker in 2013, the only confirmation was from an anonymous source. "They are very sweet together," a source told Us Magazine . "They've been dating forever, years, and live together; [they're] very comfortable and in love. She was with him before the Girls fame."

57th New York Film Festival - "Marriage Story" Arrivals BusinessInsider USA Images

Tucker and Driver have a son together, but they were able to keep his birth hidden from the press for about two years . It was only after Driver's sister-in-law made her Instagram account public that an eagle-eyed fan was able to spot his sons head in a picture.

"My job is to be a spyto be in public and live life and have experience. But, when you feel like youre the focus, its really hard to do that," Driver explained to The New Yorker in October 2019.

Driver's first movie role was in 2011's J. Edgar .

Shortly after being discharged from the military, Driver applied to Julliard for a second time, and he was accepted. After graduating from the performing arts school, he appeared in a number of Broadway and off-Broadway stage productions before making his film debut in J. Edgar the biographical drama about the former FBI director. The film ended up grossing almost $85 million worldwide .

Yes, he's pretty tallDriver is 6'2.

Driver has been described as " enormous ," " so, so big ", and " a cross between Raging Bullera De Niro and Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck ." But while 6'2 is definitely tall, it's not the hulking height that some might expect from seeing the actor in his film and TV roles. However, Vice recently reported that a fan that had met Driver says that he is "actually closer to 6'3, and is incredibly broad in the shoulders. I'm 5'7 and one of his thighs is as wide as my entire body, hes incredibly large in frame so he appears much, much larger."

Adam Driver, Noah Baumbach and David Heyman attend a screening of Marriage Story. BusinessInsider USA Images

He almost didn't take his role in Girls.

Driver appeared on Girls from 2012-2017 as Hannah, and then Jessa's, boyfriend Adam Sackler, but he initially didn't want to take on the role that first made him famous:

"I originally passed on Girls because I thought TV was evil. I was doing a play. But [his agent persevered], and then I read it and met with Lena. I know so many good actors who havent had the opportunity that Im getting now. So Ive been finding it tricky to not lose perspective on what it is Im doing in the first place."

Driver hates watching himself on screen.

The actor has spoken about how he hates viewing his work multiple times, and in 2015 he said he had only seen the first episode of Girls. "I saw the pilot of Girls with Lena on her laptop," he told Esquire UK , "and I was like, 'This is fucking terrible.' Not the show, but the experience."

But since Driver is such a big Star Wars fan, he later decided to watch himself in 2015's The Force Awakens. "I should sayI did see Star Wars," he told The Telegraph . "Because it seemed different to me. I mean, I didnt know what was happening, a lot of the time...Still, for a month leading up to it, I was like, 'I dont know if I can watch this.' Thankfully Im masked through a lot of it, so I could kind of hide that way. But it took a long time. I remember being sick to my stomach and almost vomiting in the theater at the premiere, which was just...very disconcerting, really."