Why Adam Driver Hated Auditioning Earlier in His Career
Adam Driver has quickly become one of the most promising young actors in the movie business. After his breakout role in Lena Dunham’s Girls, he transitioned to film work, starring in movies such as Silence and Star Wars.
Nowadays, Driver rarely, if ever, has to audition for roles. However, when he was first getting his career started, Driver auditioned for tons of roles, rarely getting them.
Years later, Driver admitted that hated the auditioning process for much of his early career, but his attitude improved after he changed his perspective about it.
Adam Driver hated auditioning for roles early in his career
Driver revealed why he disliked auditioning during a resurfaced 2019 interview with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.
“[Auditioning] almost has nothing to do with the actual job,” Driver said. “I think I was pretty good at it because … my mindset about auditioning was I hated the power dynamic that I was coming in and asking for a job. So I looked at it as an opportunity for me to act.”
His perspective changed after watching a young woman audition
Driver has never really liked the politics of the movie business and has even stated that only 10% of acting is about actually performing. However, he managed to change his attitude about the auditioning process after he watched a woman prepare for her own.
“A lot of it was wasted energy, because you don’t need to come in and be… One of the helpful things I did was … I was a reader for some casting directors one time, and I would see people come in … One time, this woman who was recording people—it was like a whole day of auditions and it was interesting seeing people prepared and not prepared and what difference it made—and we had a break, and she was like, ‘Would you [work the camera]? I’m actually gonna audition for this too.’ The woman who was operating the camera. And she had spent all night working on it.”
Driver was impressed by her ambition, but he also realized how strategic the process of landing roles truly is. Now that he’s able to book any role he wants, he’s extremely grateful for how far he’s come.
“I just saw the ambition in her … It’s such an opportunity. I never get lost on how amazing it is, not just to make a living as an actor, but to work in a film,” Driver said.
He trained himself to hate casting directors before auditioning
Another trick Driver used to overcome the stress of auditions was creating personal vendettas against the casting team.
“I would always hate people before I walked into the room and auditioned,” Driver admitted. “I like, trained myself to not like them. So that way if it didn’t work out, which it didn’t, often, I’d be like, ‘Well I didn’t like those f*cking people anyway.’”
Once he stopped trying to impress casting directors and focused more on his performances, he was able to let go of his attachment to roles.
“But I worked really hard, I tried to know it as best as I could in the like, four hours that they gave me to memorize lines,” Driver said. “And then it would be really frustrating when I wouldn’t get the job. I’d be like, ‘I f*cking wasted all this time, and I’m spending money at this point to be a non-actor.’ But I was pretty good at trying to take control by making it, ‘Oh this is my opportunity to act, as opposed to like, ‘I’m gonna give you what you want.’ I tried to delete them out of the equation.”
