Hollywood Marine Adam Driver appears on GQ cover

Adam Driver has done quite well for himself in his second career.

Former Marine Adam Driver appears on the cover of September’s GQ magazine. (Courtesy photo)

Driver was disappointed to find himself a civilian again just three years after he became a Marine after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was forced out of the Corps as a lance corporal following injuries he sustained during a mountain biking accident.

But Driver’s post-Corps career has been anything but unsuccessful. He’s now a professional actor, with roles in “Girls” and the new “Star Wars” movie. He’s also appearing on the cover of the September edition of GQ magazine.

In the cover story Driver, who was a mortarman with 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, talks about how the  Corps put his later struggles as an aspiring actor into perspective, and gave him a lust for working through pain in the way to success. From the issue:

Driver applies the discipline acquired in the military to everything he does, from the quotidian details of existence to his work.

“I think it’s good to live an artful life,” he says, sipping a pink smoothie in the Brooklyn cafe we’ve safely landed in after our helicopter ride. “I like everything I do to have some kind of meaning.”

To attain something worthwhile, one must experience a certain amount of suffering: “The more masochistic the part, the more appealing.”

Driver has a role in the next “Star Wars” movie, and  he reportedly plays a villain (those involved with the movie are secretive about who Driver plays in the film). My colleague Jon R. Anderson profiled Driver in June. He pressed the actor on his thoughts on evil roles and got this great back-and-forth exchange about how to make a bad guy on the screen seem real.

Ask Driver who his favorite villain is, and he suddenly gets cagey.

“The guy at the coffee shop who screws up my order,” he says after a long pause. “It’s an actual guy.”

Ask him to describe any villain that he’s played to date and he takes even longer.

“That’s hard because I don’t think anyone is really a villain,” he said. “I don’t think of any character as a villain because then you judge them and distance yourself from them.”

Driver’s story in GQ came with a cover shoot. The Klieg lights might be bleaching out the salty habits ingrained into Driver from his Marine Corps days — he’s actually smiling in a few of the photos, a departure from the SOP of official military portraits.

Also worth noting: There’s a report about male sexual assault in the military in the same edition.