Adam Driver tells Jimmy Fallon he agreed to star in '65' for one reason: His son loves dinosaurs

A-list celebrities accept movie roles based on the sage wisdom of veteran managers, publicists, agents, and, in some rare cases, dinosaur-loving children. Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Tuesday evening, Adam Driver confessed that he decided to board the science fiction action-thriller 65 (out in theaters everywhere this Friday) because his son is a big fan of prehistoric lizards. 

"It's dinosaurs and laser guns and I'm like, 'Yeah, sure,'" the actor told Fallon, going on to add that the offer to star in the blockbuster project came during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. "We were talking about dinosaurs every day with my son, but also making something big that families could go see seemed good at the time. It's a big movie, the scale was really massive, it was dinosaurs — no one asked me to play that before — and it seemed interesting. And [the fact] that everyone in the family could see it."

Check out Adam Driver's full interview with Jimmy Fallon below:

Written and directed by A Quiet Place co-writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the movie follows two survivors of a terrible crash — Mills (Driver) and Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) — who find themselves on Earth 65 million years ago.

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While a guy named Adam arriving on this planet at the dawn of time sounds a heck of a lot like the setup for a Biblical allegory, Driver saw the movie as a parable reflecting the pandemic experience. "Everyone's fighting this invisible enemy that they have no precedent for," he said, also clarifying that time travel does not play a part in the story. "It's a parallel universe that they're saying existed 65 million years ago and they find that they've crash-landed on prehistoric Earth."

With real dinosaurs a little hard to come by in today's economy, the production went with CGI creatures instead. In addition to the usual tennis-ball-on-a-stick method of visual effects, Driver also got to interact with performers decked out in full dinosaur costumes.  

"It doesn't seem terrifying like it would be, but it's scary when you're actually looking at a life-sized dinosaur," he admitted. "Two people dressed as a life-sized dinosaur, that was terrifying. But when it's like a guy hitting you in the face with a tennis ball, it's just humiliating."

Beck and Woods produced the feature alongside Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling, and Zainab Azizi. Maryann Brandon, Doug Merrifield, Jason Cloth, and Aaron L. Gilbert are executive producers. Chloe Coleman (My Spy) rounds out the cast.

Adam Driver's 65 hits the big screen this Friday, March 10.

All episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon are now streaming on Peacock, including the latest episode featuring Driver. New episodes of The Tonight Show air weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC. Want more dinosaur action? The original Jurassic Park trilogy is also available on Peacock, alongside the first Jurassic World.