Adam Driver

Adam Driver really lived up to his last name. An occasional theatre performer and singer in his suburban Indiana high school, the intense but directionless Driver signed up for the Marines shortly after 9/11 and spent nearly three years training for overseas combat before being honorably discharged. After graduating from the famed Juilliard School, Driver brought his darkly magnetic presence to a string of minor TV appearances and landed small roles in HBO's Dr. Kevorkian biopic "You Don't Know Jack" (2010) and the lumbering "J. Edgar" (2011). But it was his performance on the buzzy, bruising "Girls" (HBO, 2012-17) as Adam Sackler, Lena Dunham's emotionally complicated boyfriend, that brought him into the spotlight. Big-screen roles in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" (2012), the Coen Brothers' folk-scene homage "Inside Llewyn Davis" (2013), and Noah Baumbach's indie hit "Frances Ha" (2012) ensured he stayed there. While his nuanced performance as Kylo Ren in the much-anticipated "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (2015) and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (2017) brought Driver to a whole new level of international superstardom, his work in smaller films like Jim Jarmusch's "Paterson" (2016), Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories" (2017), Steven Soderbergh's "Logan Lucky" (2017) and Spike Lee's "Black Klansman" (2018) kept him true to his indie roots. In between films, Driver co-founded Arts in the Armed Forces, a non-profit organization that staged theatrical and musical performances for members of the military.