Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts are shown in a scene from “While We’re Young.” (Photo credit: A24)

By Barbara Vancheri
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In “While We’re Young,” Adam Driver plays a 20-something Brooklyn hipster but he actually identifies with Ben Stiller’s middle-age character.

“I was attracted to Josh’s character more just because of my background. Discipline is good,” he said recently by phone. “It’s good to spend some time with something as opposed to feeling everything needs to be rushed and put out there all the time.”

Discipline? Driver was a Marine before being medically discharged after breaking his sternum while mountain biking.

The closing of one door, however, opened wide a window on acting that included HBO’s “Girls,” “Lincoln,” “Inside Llewyn Davis,” “This Is Where I Leave You,” Martin Scorsese’s 2016 “Silence” co-starring Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfield and — cue the music and scroll the type — “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.”

In “While We’re Young,” a Noah Baumbach comedy, Josh has accumulated 100 hours of footage with a historian who is admittedly “kind of boring.” Driver’s character Jamie, on the other hand, has barely disclosed his inspiration for a documentary and shot some early footage when he seems ready to share it with a small invited audience.

“But then, at the same time, Jamie and a younger generation is so used to interconnectedness of everything which, for me, I don’t respond to but what I like about what Noah has written — and actually is an admirable quality — someone who can make something from nothing or can work fast and doesn’t make it as precious as Josh seems to be taking everything.”

So, just what is the key to Jamie — his ambition, talent, cool vibe?

“I think he’s someone who looks for opportunities in everything and, again, I think likes to create something from nothing. Where the moral ambiguity starts to get a little tricky is to at what end? … What is the honorable way of working and what isn’t? That’s all kind of gray area that the movie touches on.”

That is why “While We’re Young” is designed as a conversation starter.

It’s the 31-year-old actor’s second collaboration with Baumbach after “Frances Ha.”

“What he’s written feels very much like theater to me, in a way that I really love. He’s so detailed and specific, it’s just really fun to work with him,” Driver said, although he said the director-writer is open to playing within the framework he has created.

“Because it’s so good, you can play so many different intentions and he is more than willing to see where that goes. … As a person, he’s really easy to talk to and smart and funny, kind of what you want. Makes you feel at ease and keeps everything focused.”

Driver has been working alongside some veteran directors and performers, such as Jane Fonda in “This Is Where I Leave You.” She portrays the just-widowed mother of Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Corey Stoll and Driver.

“You learn a lot about people through the way that they work,” he said. “Jane Fonda’s a good example of that of someone who has been doing it so long but, at the same time, is so curious and open to other people and couldn’t be more generous and just good. She still has a youthful ambition in trying to do the best possible version of the story and that’s inspiring to watch.”

Driver was having a moment and then some last fall with stories lavishing praise on him as (in GQ) “his generation’s cure for the cookie-cutter leading man.” He may have seen and heard nothing yet, though, given the white hot anticipation for “Star Wars.”

Asked if he has a strategy to deal with the certain mania, he laughed and said no. “Sheer ignorance. I have no strategy. I don’t think about it at all. There is no game plan nor do I think it should even merit one.”