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Adam Driver walked into Cannes with a seven-minute standing ovation behind him, and walked out with the best non-answer of the festival.
At the Sunday press conference for his new film "Paper Tiger," the "House of Gucci" actor, 42, was asked point-blank about Lena Dunham's claims in her recently released memoir, "Famesick," in which she alleged he exhibited volatile and at times frightening behavior on the set of their HBO series "Girls."
Driver's response was brief, deadpan and, judging by the laughter that followed, perfectly delivered. "I have no comment on any of that," he told the room. "I'm saving it all for my book."
The allegations Driver sidestepped are serious ones. In "Famesick," Dunham, 40, described a night rehearsing lines in her trailer during which she froze on her dialogue.
According to the memoir, Driver grew increasingly impatient before erupting, shouting at her to speak and hurling a chair against the wall beside her. She also told the Guardian that he screamed directly in her face and put a fist through the wall of his own trailer on a separate occasion.
Despite those accounts, Dunham was careful to present a complicated picture of their dynamic. She wrote that while Driver could be short-tempered, physically imposing, and condescending, he was equally capable of warmth, even protectiveness. The two, she noted, "still felt like partners" during the show's debut season in 2012, and she admitted spending considerable time wondering simply whether he liked her.
Dunham has since shown her own reluctance to dwell on the subject publicly. When pressed about Driver during a "Today" show appearance after the memoir's release, she steered the conversation elsewhere.
"Paper Tiger," directed by James Gray and co-starring Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, opened Saturday night to rapturous applause on the Croisette. Whatever Driver's book eventually contains, his Cannes chapter appears to be going rather well.
