Is this the year of Adam Driver?

That could very well be the case. The 36-year-old actor stars in the critically acclaimed films “Marriage Story” and “The Report,” both of which are likely Oscar contenders. And he reprises his role as the menacing villain Kylo Ren Friday in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”

Take a moment to consider this towering, broad-shouldered, big-eared performer. For years, many of us knew him simply as Hannah’s strange boyfriend in HBO’s “Girls.” A lot of viewers despised Hannah and Adam’s relationship, finding Leah Dunham and Driver’s mannerisms grating. Yet others found tremendous humor in their performances, interpreting “Girls” as a parody, not an unchecked portrayal, of white urban privilege.

Driver’s image wasn’t one American audiences were used to seeing in a prestige drama. He was tall and muscular, but he wasn’t Ryan Gosling. In 2012, he might have played Gosling’s depressed younger brother in a romantic comedy. Driver’s body, often unclothed and in a fit of sweaty rage on “Girls,” didn’t fit the mold for a leading man in Hollywood, nor did his behavior as a love interest. And his absurdly low voice didn’t exactly signal “A-list movie star.”

Yet behind that hulking body and Dobby the Elf ears were the makings of the Driver of 2019, who would carry not one, not two, but three major releases in the span of three months.

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Driver the performer has always been good, always been multifaceted. So what happened between 2012 and today?

“Girls” ran from 2012 to 2017, a period when television was evolving in multiple ways. “Girls” predated, and helped foment, the contemporary prestige-drama climate that allows for shows like “Fleabag” and “Russian Doll” — featuring complex women who don’t always need to be likable — to exist. Yet the conversation about whether “Girls” was great drama was often drowned out by larger, seemingly grander narratives about identity.

“Girls” was one of the first big shows where the narrative was shaped by online think pieces about who gets to be onscreen. One big talking point was the lack of people of color in a show that took place in New York City. The second homed in on a scene in which Driver has a sexual encounter with a woman, during which he is demeaning, domineering and uninterested in her consent. “Girls” was problematized, largely because the country’s deeper cultural issue — the severe lack of points of view from women and minorities in television — needed to be uprooted.

Driver’s breakthrough role remains one of the most fascinating interpretations of traditional masculinity in recent times. Hannah’s boyfriend, Adam Sackler, was often disliked by viewers, if only because his brooding, shirtless manliness was twisted up in the idea that he couldn’t figure out what type of man he wanted to be. From the outside, he was neither the ideal man for a Fox News viewer (traditional, straight, loyal) or a left-leaning millennial (feminist, woke). Caught somewhere between James Dean’s romanticized sense of danger and Woody Allen’s intellectualized sensitivity, Driver at the time simply wasn’t understood.

And look at Driver himself. He was a Marine who did theater. Where, in an America that appears to be growing rapidly more partisan, does that kind of man fit in? Well, perhaps in a Spike Lee film, as an undercover Jewish cop posing as a Klansman while simultaneously acting as a cover for an African American detective. Only a misfit can play a character who’s supposed to be “black,” Jewish and a white supremacist at different times in the same film (it’s a police detective plot device that’s less confusing than it sounds here).

Today, a year after 2018’s “BlacKkKlansman,” and in a country growing used to living in a bizzaro world reality, a bizzaro actor now flourishes. Now, Driver is starring in the best domestic drama of the year (“Marriage Story”), the best political docudrama of the year (“The Report”) and likely the most popular film of the year (“Star Wars”) — or at least second to “Avengers: Endgame.” Driver is incredible in an obvious way in “Marriage Story.” He’s phenomenal in subtle form in “The Report.” And he has potential to be the most interesting character in the closing film of the “Stars Wars” saga.

“Marriage Story” was the perfect way for both Driver and co-star Scarlett Johansson to show they aren’t just Kylo Ren and Black Widow. The industry, after all, is in a difficult artistic space where rising talent is funneled into a career of green screens and space aliens. By having a breakthrough role in a big franchise film, new actors’ appeal broadens, while their acting range narrows. Chadwick Boseman becomes Black Panther. Tom Holland becomes Spider-Man. Chris Pratt becomes Star Lord.

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Yet Johansson, about to finally star in a “Black Widow” film in 2020, has one of the best roles of her career in Noah Baumbach’s film about a divorce. And Driver, as Charlie, fuels her performance. They are a loving couple who care for one another by way of small acts of domestic service — ordering sandwiches, tying shoes, caring for their young son.

Playing a successful avant-garde theater director, Driver could have settled with the stereotype of a narcissistic, emotional unavailable artist. He’s more than that. Driver chooses to hide the simmering rage and just-below-the-surface insecurity in the first two-thirds of the film, letting the emotion explode only during the Oscar-contending climactic scene. It’s a riveting, claustrophobic moment, where Johansson and Driver yell, cry and plead with the natural rhythm of two people who just can’t make things work.

It’s that same stoicism that marks the early scenes of “The Report,” in which Driver plays into the fact that his character is, on the surface, a bit dry. He’s Daniel Jones, a lead investigator and author of a 6,700-page report for the Senate Intelligence Committee. Are you still reading, or did you just fall asleep?

Yes, the film takes its time. So does he. Soon enough, Driver’s eyes light up with shock as the movie cuts to graphic scenes of torture. This is a man seeing his nation use its power to humiliate, chain, starve, psychologically manipulate and waterboard suspected terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Jones speaks like a bureaucrat. But he sounds like a man pitted against the world. Driver’s tone starts off even, then grows in frustration and outrage. His low voice rises in indignation, yet remains controlled.

This is why he was cast as a “Star Wars” villain — there’s something that feels psychopathic about Driver when he conceals emotion. Watch his early scenes in “The Report,” and you see that directors love to harness Driver’s deadpan manner. After all, it’s always married with a burning emotionality to give Driver’s characters a sense of duality. In “Marriage Story,” it’s to show how caught off guard Charlie is by the brutality of divorce proceedings. In “The Report,” it’s to illustrate how even the most stoic bureaucrat can’t contain his rage when he finds out the truth about American use of torture. And in the “Star Wars” films, this stoicism acts as a mask for a corrupted boy who, in “The Last Jedi,” turns out to be tragically endearing and surprisingly seductive.

That was always Driver’s appeal. He’s a dude next door who also acts and looks like an alien animatronic. He’s a Marine veteran who loves Sondhiem. He’s an enigma. And he’s both relatable and unique — the two key ingredients of a fully formed movie star.

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