Michael Mann: “We can compare Adam Driver to Pacino and De Niro”

The director is full of praise for the star playing Enzo Ferrari in his next film.

Presented for the first time at the Venice Film Festival this summer, the new film by Michael Mann, Ferrari, is desired. The film marks the great return of the acclaimed director of Last of the Mohicans, Heat And Miami Vice and he’s the star Adam Driver (The Last Duel, House of Gucci) who was chosen to play Enzo Ferrari, the founder of the prestigious automobile team.

In the columns ofEntertainment Weekly, Michael Mann was asked about his relationship with Adam Driver and if the actor was chosen thanks to his role in the Gucci biopic directed by Ridley Scott. “No, the Gucci movie has absolutely nothing to do with it” the filmmaker responds firmly. “I met him long before I saw House of Gucci”. He describes Adam Driver as an actor possessing “artistic strength and integrity coupled with fierce artistic ambition as an actor.”

According to Michael Mann, Adam Driver is someone who “in his personal history, lived a life”. For him, it is an essential point which allowed him to immediately feel the actor’s ability to “understand Enzo Ferrari.”

“I mean, I’m trying to put into words what was a very powerful and intuitive revelation that I had when we were having drinks together one evening at the Chateau Marmont and we were talking about nothing.”, recalls the filmmaker. “That’s when I thought he might be Enzo Ferrari. I make casting decisions based on this perception of what’s going on inside.”

Michael Mann specifies that even if it is a biopic, “the physical manifestation, the physical look, it’s craft work, it’s secondary”. The most important thing for him was therefore to find the actor who would connect with what Enzo Ferrari was, more than someone who looked like him: “It’s not like I have to find someone who looks like Enzo Ferrari. Nobody looks like Enzo Ferrari.”

Michael Mann also agrees thatAdam Driver is of the caliber of the New Hollywood generation of actors in the 1970s: “We can compare Adam Driver has Pacino And De Niro, but I don’t think it’s generational. I think it’s an approach and commitment to the present moment, without hesitation or qualms, to really reaching for the high E on the violin or walking a tightrope without a net underneath. Al does this.”

“It’s the kind of artistic ambition that drives someone to try to achieve something and overcomes hesitation and fear. So there is no fear. There is anxiety, that you won’t make it, but you go anyway. Adam has this quality”, he explains.

For the moment, Ferrari does not yet have a release date in France. It will be broadcast on Amazon Prime Video.

Adam Driver loses his temper at a spectator after a Ferrari screening: “Fuck you!”