You’ve seen the photographs. Every few months, Adam Driver’s Burberry Hero shoot – his face forlorn and distant, his body like sculpted marble – starts to permeate your on a regular basis reality. It swans by on buses, drifts through your timeline, or gets shared on a drooling mutual’s story. Its ubiquity is sensible when you consider the impressive parts that helped create it: there’s director Jonathan Glazer, the arthouse visionary behind Under The Skin; there’s the immersive, sultry thrum of FKA twigs’ rating; there’s the dramatic seascape setting and hazy sunlit skies. And, after all, there’s Adam Driver himself – one of the in-demand actors working today – racing at full speed next to a horse. 

When asked why he selected Driver to be the face of the Burberry fragrance last yr, Riccardo Tisci was effusive. “[Driver has] this incredible depth in articulating what masculinity means today,” said the brand’s former chief creative officer, “how strength will be subtle, and emotions can empower.” The scent itself – a fresh, peppery mix of pine, cedarwood and juniper – was Tisci’s first for the style house, and an try to bottle this sort of masculine ideal. “I wanted Burberry Hero to encapsulate modern masculinity, to play on the essence of primal human and natural instincts, channelling the duality between strength and sensitivity.”

The campaign went viral last yr, due to the surreal plot twist (Driver turns right into a centaur). But now, months later, the brand has blessed us once more, marking the discharge of the brand new Burberry Hero Eau de Parfum with some thirst-quenching latest imagery and unseen BTS shots. To have fun, we got a fast 10 minutes to talk through the campaign with Driver. Prepare for his face to haunt your festive season once more. 

Physicality was an enormous a part of this project – you race a horse, you swim with a horse, you transform right into a horse. Are you able to tell us the way you got your body ready for the shoot?

Adam Driver: I met this guy named Ian, who’s a trainer that I knew, and I showed him the photographs that I got from Jonathan Glazer. Jonathan was telling me that he wanted my body to match the sinewy muscles of a horse, which seems very difficult. So we put together a three-month plan of the right way to get there. After which I worked out for a few hours a day, five days every week within the leadup, after which, , obviously… are you continue to awake?

Yes!

Adam Driver: I’m putting myself to sleep! [Laughs] No, I’m kidding. So that you eat less and fewer, exercise increasingly, and get increasingly mad the closer you get to the shoot date since you’re so hungry. Then you definately shoot it and that’s sort of it.

How did this compare to how you usually approach the physicality of your characters? What’s your preparation process normally – do you mostly start with the body?

Adam Driver: It varies. You will have an hour and a half to 2 hours to inform the life story of an individual, and their physical life is normally so vital: when someone walks within the door, in the event that they’re hunched over and so they‘re tall, then that claims that they’re used to bending right down to talk over with people. Or you possibly can tell if someone is self-conscious a few certain body part from their walk. People’s physical lives can almost tell us just as much as dialogue. In the event that they don’t exercise, then what does that seem like? In the event that they’re a certain age, then how long have they not been exercising? Or should you’re playing a construction employee, what’s their specific job on the team? If it’s operating a jackhammer, then they’ll probably have stronger arms than legs. So you consider what they’re eating, how they’re spending their time, and it starts informing how you progress on the planet. After which that’s really helpful, since it starts to feed into the way you speak.

I generally get my lines out of the way in which as soon as possible, after which attempt to work from the within out. But for this, the skin is de facto vital – Johnathan had this concept of a [half man half] horse, so it’s not likely a lot about an internal life. It was an aesthetic one, in order that’s just about all I needed to take into consideration. But in movies, you might be playing a personality so it’s not only the way it looks – it’s how the person thinks that’s the priority.

Would you say this, physically speaking, was one in every of your most difficult roles?

Adam Driver: No. I’d say Silence [where I played a 17th-century Jesuit priest and lost three and half stone] was probably the most difficult role. [We all] needed to drop loads of weight in that, because [the characters] were ravenous. It’s sort of hard to inform that story with loads of weight on, or if you look comfortable, because those guys weren’t.

What about your relationship with fragrance? Have you mostly worn it? 

Adam Driver: By no means, but loads of people do – I [only] learned this recently! I believe once I was a child, my mom got me a bottle of Stetson cologne for Christmas, and I’d just keep getting that very same bottle of Stetson cologne. Actually, that’s not true – Brute was the primary cologne I got, I believe once I was like 4 years old. You realize that little green bottle that has the tube on it?

Possibly an American thing.

Adam Driver: Yeah [laughs]. But I didn’t have like a scent, I’d just try to remain showered as much as I could. So this isn’t a part of my world, necessarily. And it’s not something that I’d ever have planned to be involved with – I’m at all times inquisitive about things I do know nothing about.

How different did shooting this campaign feel from what you were used to?

Adam Driver: It’s just about the identical, but there was a client there weighing in on certain things – normally it’s only a conversation between you, the director, and the DP. But so far as executing it, it was almost the exact same. [Though it was] insane: there was a crew, there have been a ton of horses, and also you needed to adapt to their schedule because they’ve rights that you may have to stick to, if that is sensible. [Laughs] They don’t swim, they bite, so you only needed to attempt to spend the shoot not getting bitten or drowned by a horse. Aside from that, the method was just about the identical.

“The town has a pulse that you may feel even should you’re indoors, so being outside where there’s nobody around and being in nature is incredibly vital. It’s a giant a part of my life” – Adam Driver

This campaign can also be a celebration of the natural world. How vital is nature to you? Is it vital to be in a natural environment, or are you a city person?

Adam Driver: Nature is large for me, [but] I live in Brooklyn. I like the town, Latest York is my favorite city on the planet. But should you can, getting out of it is de facto helpful. It has an energy and a pulse that you may feel even should you’re indoors, so being outside where there’s nobody around and being in nature is incredibly vital. It’s a giant a part of my life.

And at last, I feel like you will need to have been asked this query about 4000 times during this campaign, I’m really sorry…

Adam Driver: …Do I smell?

How bad do you smell?? …No, who’s your personal hero? Be happy to provide a really unique or strange answer that isn’t true.

Adam Driver: There are plenty of people at different times in my life who I could define as heroes. But to be honest, recently, the those that I find probably the most heroic are the parents in Uvalde, Texas – , to lose your kids after which rise up the following day, is a heroic act. It requires a will that is de facto impressive. So I’d say them for now.

Burberry Hero Eau de Parfum is obtainable at The Perfume Shop