In the (nonexistent) “How to Be an Actor” manual, they certainly don’t train you for a (rude) question like this: Adam Driver, who stars in the forthcoming Ferrari—out later this month—was asked a jarring question by journalist Chris Wallace on last week’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? During the interview, Wallace asked Driver if Driver’s looks—which some might consider unconventional for a movie star—had been a “help or a hindrance” in his career, and Driver responded in the best way he possibly could.
“I’ve worked consistently, which is nice, with people that I’ve wanted to always, dreamed that I wanted to work with,” Driver said, per People. “So, in that sense, it hasn’t—I look how I look. I can’t change that. So, I guess it helped me.”
And then, the dash of humor: “A hindrance in only breaking mirrors wherever I go and having a misshapen, outsized body that I can’t fit through doorways, or most clothes or fit into most cars,” he joked. “Apart from that, it’s good.”
Wallace asked Driver in another part of the interview how he felt about comparisons to actors like Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino. “Those are the actors that made me want to be an actor, you know, so that’s a nice comparison,” Driver said. When Wallace asked whether Driver “accepts” those comparisons—specifically from the media—Driver shared negative words that have been written about him.
“Well, no,” Driver said, adding that one outlet “also called me a ‘horse face,’ so I don’t—I take it with a grain of salt. I remember reading one reviewer [who wrote] ‘His agent probably doesn’t know whether to put him in a movie or the Kentucky Derby.’ So I take it, you know—if you believe the good thing, then you have to believe the bad thing. So I try to not absorb anything.”
Social media was none too happy about Wallace’s question; one user on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) posted of Driver’s appearance that he “has been considered a heartthrob for the better part of a decade and clones of him now dominate romance novel covers, but Chris Wallace thinks he’s ugly because he doesn’t look like…Robert Redford,” referencing a point in the conversation where Wallace used Redford as an example of traditional Hollywood-actor looks.
“Maybe I’m trying to be diplomatic,” Driver said. “And I guess if I was alone in a room, I’m like, who doesn’t want to look like Robert Redford? But I just kind of accept it. This is how I look.”
And that, my friends, is a masterclass in how to rise above the noise. Driver’s Ferrari hits theaters on Christmas Day.
