Why Adam Driver was cast as motoring icon in Ferrari

Ferrari director Michael Mann has revealed what convinced him to cast Adam Driver in the new biopic.

Eight years on from his last feature, the hacker thriller Blackhat starring Chris Hemsworth, Mann returns this Christmas with an adaptation of Brock Yates's Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine, which delves into the concurrent professional and personal crisis of car manufacturer Ferrari's founder in the summer of 1957.

Speaking on the Inside Total Film podcast, the filmmaker recalled sitting down for drinks with Driver at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles to discuss the project.

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"There was something about how he's lived life. He has a raw ambition, an artistic ambition, and real ferocity behind that drive to really do this work, do it really well, and really get it," Mann said.

"You see it all over, it's a transformational performance in how he moves, how he walks, the weight, how he breathes.The way he captured all the cultural gestures, it's all intentional, there is no, 'I'll just show up and be spontaneous.' This is all preparation, and it's all work.

"I think I sensed that ferocity is based on real-life, real-world experience, and I thought this guy is Enzo Ferrari on the inside. The outside, you fix with craftwork – it's what's on the inside."

According to the Heat and Collateral director, the pair's working attitudes were completely in tandem.

"We discovered that we're very similar, which is part of why we got along so well," added Mann.

"If there was a scene that wasn't working, Adam would be angry and I'd say, 'Well, what's going on?' and he'd be angry at himself.

"I have the same characteristics, I placed a lot of demands on myself, Adam places tremendous demands on himself."

Ferrari arrives in cinemas on Boxing Day.

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