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Adam Driver has had one of the more idiosyncratic career arcs of any actor working today. After making his on-screen debut in the TV series The Unusuals in 2009, Driver went on to play supporting roles in numerous independents. These included scene-stealing performances in films such as Frances Ha and Inside Llewyn Davis. He also played smaller roles in films by acclaimed directors such as Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, including J. Edgar and Lincoln. Starting in 2015, he transitioned to the mainstream when he made his debut as Kylo Ren in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens.

Since making his Star Wars debut, the roles Driver takes on have been incredibly varied and often mocked. This is evidenced through parts in Marriage Story and this year's critically panned Megalopolis, both of which have subsequently been the subject of memes. Even apart from these virally ridiculed moments, Driver has made...

Although celebrities, publicists and NBC are boycotting the 79th annual Golden Globes, the show will go on — although it’s unclear in what form.

On Monday, the Hollywood Foreign Press trudged forward with its nominations for its dinner on Jan. 9, which currently doesn’t have a broadcast partner because of scrutiny over the glaring lack of diversity among its voters. The organization’s president Helen Hoehne informed viewers on YouTube, where about 10,000 people were watching, that the HFPA had instituted changes to reform its outdated practices, including adding 21 new members. Last winter, a bombshell investigation in the Los Angeles Times revealed that the group previously didn’t have a single Black member.

Then Hoehne introduced a surprise presenter — Snoop Dogg — to kick off the nominations. Wearing dark sunglasses just after 6 a.m. in Los Angeles, Dogg struggled with the teleprompter, butchering so many of the nominees’ names that it was...

Mohamedou Ould Salahi endured unimaginable horror as an inmate of the U.S. government’s notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than 14 years. In all that time, no charge was ever leveled against him, and with the help of his tireless lawyer Nancy Hollander, who weathered extreme criticism for representing terror suspects, he was finally granted his freedom in 2016. His story is the subject of director Kevin Macdonald’s new film The Mauritanian, based on the memoir Salahi wrote in confinement, in which Tahar Rahim telegraphs the pain and resolve of a casualty of America’s heavy-handed war on terror. Yet, as Rahim explains, it was a role he might have dismissed before reading it…

Deadline: You last worked with Kevin Macdonald on The Eagle. That was your very first role after A Prophet, right?

Tahar Rahim: Yes. I remember when A Prophet came out, I had a lot of offers,...

You and I may never get access to the classified 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of torture in the War on Terror, and many are just as unlikely to read the 525-page executive summary released to the public in 2014.

But with “The Report,” writer-director Scott Z. Burns’ adrenalized dramatization of the CIA’s gravely ill-conceived actions and the rigor and righteousness with which Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) unearthed its harrowing details, two hours is enough intake time to convince anyone that the quest for accountability in government is as necessary as ever.

Though it premiered at Sundance in January, “The Report” is likely to hold even more significance to news-savvy audiences now, what with impeachment hearings in the wake of a whistleblower’s accusation of presidential wrongdoing. The movie might need that headline-adjacent curiosity from audiences, too: For all the ways Burns has condensed...

Lone Scherfig’s “The Kindness of Strangers” will open the 2019 Berlin Film Festival. It’s a familiar venue for the veteran filmmaker, who brought her eventual Oscar-nominated “An Education” to the Berlinale back in 2009.

Her most recent work stars Zoe Kazan and Tahar Rahim as two New Yorkers who help each other through a trying time against the backdrop of a Russian restaurant. The film’s ensemble also includes Andrea Riseborough, Bill Nighy, Jay Baruchel, and Caleb Landry Jones.

The film is Scherfig’s first in three years, after the Gemma Arterton-led WWII movie “Their Finest.” That film did not end up making a Berlin stop, but Scherfig had other titles play the festival, even before “An Education.” Her first feature “The Birthday Club” played as part of the 1990 festival, while her Maeve Binchy adaptation “Italian for Beginners” took home a Silver Bear jury prize a decade later.

It...

Who will prevail in the 2018 Emmy race for Best Movie/Mini Supporting Actor? Alexander Skarsgard won the prize last year for his role as an abusive husband in “Big Little Lies,” so who will succeed him in 2018? Gold Derby has hosted exclusive video chats with 15 of this year’s candidates, including past nominees and potential Emmy rookies. Follow the links below to be taken to their full interviews.

Paul Bettany (“Manhunt: Unabomber”): Bettany plays Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, who terrorized the country with a series of bombings spanning almost two decades. He previously received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the film “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” (2003). He also earned a SAG nomination with the ensemble cast of “A Beautiful Mind” (2001). (Click here to be taken to his full interview)

Jon Jon Briones (“The Assassination of Gianni Versace”): Briones plays Modesto Cunanan,...

I’m the patron saint of lost Emmy causes — is it still too late for “Buffy” and “The Wire”? — so while my colleague Marcus James Dixon recently singled out actors and actresses he’s rooting for who are on the bubble based on our racetrack odds, I’m focusing on the deep bench of 100/1 long shots who deserve recognition this year. But sometimes long shots pay off.

Last year nine actors earned Emmy nominations despite distant 100/1 odds in our predictions: Jane Fonda, Zach Galifianakis, Kathryn Hahn, Wanda Sykes, Samira Wiley, Mandy Patinkin, Shannon Purser and Michael Kenneth Williams and Bill Camp.

Emmy voting ended on June 25, and the nominations will be announced on July 12. So here are the top five male actors with 100/1 odds I’m hoping the television academy left room for.

Sign UPfor Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions

Peter Capaldi (“Doctor Who: Twice Upon a...

A version of this story about Tahar Rahim first appeared in the Miniseries/Movies issue of TheWrap’s Emmy magazine.

When Tahar Rahim first met Ali Soufan, the real-life former FBI agent he plays in Hulu’s gripping limited series “The Looming Tower,” Soufan hit him with a pointed parting shot.

“He said, ‘And if you don’t accept this role, you will never again have the right to complain that you only get offers to play terrorists,'” Rahim said, laughing.

In fact, Rahim had complained about exactly that in the past. Although the French actor with Algerian ancestry had made a name for himself in such notable European films as Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet” and Asghar Farhadi’s “The Past,” he had spent fruitless years trying to land acceptable English-language projects.

Also Read: 'The Looming Tower' Author Warns Political Division That Led to 9/11 Flourishes Now...

After making history last year by becoming the first streaming service to win Best Drama Series for “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Hulu has its sights set on another first: a Best Limited Series victory for “The Looming Tower.” Based on Lawrence Wright‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book, the show recounts the events leading up to the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Gold Derby spoke with stars Jeff Daniels, Peter Sarsgaard, Bill Camp, and Tahar Rahim, showrunner Dan Futterman, composer Will Bates, visual effects supervisor Aaron Raff, and visual effects producer Steven Weigle. Scroll down and click on any name below to be taken to their full interviews.

Daniels plays John O’Neill, the real-life FBI agent who investigated al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the years leading up to the attacks. The actor hadn’t read the book and didn’t know the specific historical details before taking part in the series,...

Tahar Rahim owes his UTA agent, Ali Benmohamed, a huge thank you. If it weren’t for Benmohamed’s insistence that Rahim read the script for The Looming Tower, in spite of Rahim’s blanket refusal to read anything that would cast Muslims as terrorists, he might never have played perhaps the most defining role of his career since his international breakthrough in Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet in 2009.

But so far, so agent. What makes Benmohamed so essential to Rahim chasing the role is his first name. When Rahim read the first two scripts for the Hulu miniseries, created by Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney and Lawrence Wright (and based on Wright’s non-fiction book of the same name) he liked what he saw in the character of Ali Soufan—a real-life FBI operative (and a Muslim) who Wright believes came closer than anyone to stopping 9/11. “These types of heroes existed 17 years ago,...

“If you don’t learn about your history, you’re doomed to repeat it.” That’s one of the most important takeaways of the Hulu limited series “The Looming Tower,” according to actor Tahar Rahim. He stars as Ali Soufan, a real-life FBI agent who investigated al-Qaeda in the years leading up to the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Watch our exclusive video interview with Rahim above.

Rahim had the opportunity to meet Soufan before portraying him, and he wanted to get to know him “just like two friends, to understand more about who he is in his private life so I could bring this to the character.” He was especially impressed by Soufan’s dedication at such a young age. He was in his 20s when he joined the FBI, while Rahim remembers his own 20s as “hanging out with my friends, having fun, parties, restaurants. I was not even aware...

Just a few days after 9/11, author Lawrence Wright was already searching for the right character to serve as the spine of his investigation into the horrific World Trade Center bombings. “You can’t write about 3,000 deaths, but you can write about one,” he told me.

When he found John O’Neill’s obituary in The Washington Post, he felt a spooky familiarity. “The import of his life and death carries the story. This former FBI agent, who was washed out of the FBI for taking classified information out of the office, wound up as head of security at the World Trade Center. This is the man who was supposed to get Bin Laden — and Bin Laden got him.”

Wright’s book contains weird echoes of “The Siege,” a prophetic 1998 Ed Zwick thriller co-written by Wright that starred Denzel Washington as the head of security at the World Trade Center; Tony Shalhoub...

Just a few days after 9/11, author Lawrence Wright was already searching for the right character to serve as the spine of his investigation into the horrific World Trade Center bombings. “You can’t write about 3,000 deaths, but you can write about one,” he told me.

When he found John O’Neill’s obituary in The Washington Post, he felt a spooky familiarity. “The import of his life and death carries the story. This former FBI agent, who was washed out of the FBI for taking classified information out of the office, wound up as head of security at the World Trade Center. This is the man who was supposed to get Bin Laden — and Bin Laden got him.”

Wright’s book contains weird echoes of “The Siege,” a prophetic 1998 Ed Zwick thriller co-written by Wright that starred Denzel Washington as the head of security at the World Trade Center; Tony Shalhoub...

French actor Tahar Rahim knows the chance to play an American hero is rare. “It’s a type of character you don’t get to be offered that often, especially when you’re from another country,” he tells Variety. But still, when he first received scripts for Dan Futterman’s Hulu limited series “The Looming Tower,” based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, he wasn’t sure he was ready to take on the role of FBI agent Ali Soufan.

“I read the three first episodes — they were still writing the other episodes — and I thought it was great material and a great story,” he says. “But I needed to talk with Ali Soufan first. It’s hard for an actor to say yes to 30% of the script. I didn’t know what I was going to do next — I needed to know more about...

Jeff Daniels has a strong chance to receive two Emmy Awards nominations this July. He is the leading actor on the Hulu limited series “The Looming Tower” and a supporting actor for the limited series “Godless” on Netflix. He is already a past Emmy champ for “The Newsroom” (2013) and has picked up three Golden Globe nominations in his film career for “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985), “Something Wild” (1986) and “The Squid and the Whale” (2005).

Gold Derby senior editor Daniel Montgomery recently chatted with Daniels about his two roles as contenders that could possibly bring a return to the 2018 Emmys. Enjoy that video above and read the complete interview transcript below.

SEEJeff Daniels: Will he earn 2 Emmys this year for ‘The Looming Tower’ and ‘Godless’?

Gold Derby: Jeff Daniels, you star in “The Looming Tower” as John O’Neill, who’s a real-life FBI agent who worked in counterterrorism in the...

For Jeff Daniels, when the script for Hulu’s <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/topic/looming-tower" target="_blank"><em>The Looming Tower</em></a> came across his desk, he was “stunned” and knew he had to be a part of it.

He sat down with <em>The Hollywood Reporter </em>for a game of “First, Best, Last, Worst” and explained what drew him to the role of John O’Neill, the FBI’s leading expert on Al Qaeda before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and what fellow agent Ali Soufan had to say about his performance.

“When I was first approached about <em>The Looming Tower</em>, I was stunned because I had no ...

One of the main reasons Lawrence Wright wanted to turn his Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book into a TV series was he thought people were losing touch with what happened — and why it happened.

“What had become apparent to me is that enough time has passed, [and] a new generation has grown up, and they don’t understand what 9/11 was,” Wright said in an interview with IndieWire. “For them, it was like World War II was for me: It was something that happened in my parent’s generation that really changed the world, and they speak of it in hushed tones. But what was the world like before then?”

So when Wright set out to turn “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” into a limited series, he didn’t think of it as another 9/11 story. He and his chosen collaborator — Alex Gibney, who worked with Wright on the HBO documentary...

Spoiler alert: Do not read until you’ve watched the finale of Hulu’s “The Looming Tower,” titled “9/11.”

It’s strange to start an article about “The Looming Tower” with a spoiler alert, given that the world knows exactly what happened on that tragic day in 2001. All season long, the drama has been leading up to the climactic moment when the attacks occurred. But for the creators of the show, that denouement was almost secondary, hoping instead to shed light not on what happened, but why it happened.

In the finale episode, titled simply “9/11,” the characters slowly realize that former FBI boss John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels) died in the collapse of the Twin Towers, where he’d been working as the head of security. But we also learn more just how insidious the battle between the CIA and the FBI over critical information about the terrorists was, and how...

When you watch The Looming Tower, Hulu's ambitious 10-episode adaptation of Lawrence Wright's 2006 book on the intelligence failures and international terrorist conspiracy that led up to 9/11, you'll find yourself keying in to a number of the show's moving parts and characters. There's the globetrotting narrative, with the series whisking viewers from New York and D.C. to terrorist cells in Eastern Europe, training camps near Pakistan's border and bombed embassies in Nairobi. There's the volatile F.B.I. hotshot John O'Neill and the head of the C.I.A.'s Al Qaeda unit Martin Schmidt,...

The 10-episode limited Hulu original series The Looming Tower, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, follows the counter-terrorism divisions of the FBI and CIA, in the late 1990s, as they travel the world on a mission to prevent an imminent attack on U.S. soil. As John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels) and his protégé, Muslim-American FBI agent Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), faced deliberately insufficient cooperation from their counterparts in the CIA, led by the frequently antagonistic Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard), it becomes increasingly clear that the rivalry between those two organizations may have inadvertently led …...

“The Looming Tower” is built on a stacked deck. Adapted from Lawrence Wright’s non-fiction book, Hulu’s 10-part limited series examines how infighting between the FBI and CIA may have set the path for 9/11. So not only does every member of the audience know how things end for America, but anyone specifically familiar with John O’Neill’s life is all too aware of how his prophetic arc comes to a close.

That kind of prescience can kill a series. It’s far too tempting to overplay your hand (by say, repeatedly cutting to images of the World Trade Center) or underline your point in redundant dialogue or excessive speechifying. If it seems too good, or too dramatically convenient, to be true, the audience will think that it is — even with a true story like this one.

But the key to making this work in scripted television is simply...

There are a significant number of Americans who would love to point the finger at the United States as bearing responsibility for the events of 9/11. This might be as close as they'll ever get.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower follows Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s as their threat rises.

At the center of The Looming Tower is the rivalry between the FBI and the CIA and their possible culpability for the tragic events due to an inability work together and share information, leaving the U.S. open to an attack that could have been prevented.

Showrunner Dan Futterman and Executive Producer Alex Gibney have put together a limited series that plays more like a documentary than a fictional take on actual events. Given Gibney's documentary prowess, that's no surprise.

Jeff Daniels as FBI agent John O'Neill, Tahar Rahim as FBI Agent Ali Soufan,...

The rise of Osama bin Laden and dissent between the FBI and CIA are the focuses of Hulu's new series, The Looming Tower. The 10-episode show, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Lawrence Wright, chronicles events leading up to the September 11th terrorist attacks. It premieres on Hulu February 28th.

The trailer reveals that the series will chronicle the work of agents in the FBI's I-49 Squad in New York and the CIA's Alec Station in Washington D.C., two counter-terrorism divisions working to prevent attacks on America...

Jeff Daniels stars in the upcoming Hulu drama “The Looming Tower,” which traces the rise of Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The 10-episode series, which got its first trailer on Thursday, traces the rising threat of Al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and how the rivalry between the FBI and CIA during that time may have inadvertently set the path for the tragedy of 9/11. Daniels stars as John O’Neill, a New York-based FBI supervisor. He’s joined by Tahar Rahim as Lebanese-American FBI agent Ali Soufan, Peter Sarsgaard as CIA agent Martin Schmidt, Michael Stuhlbarg as counterterrorism official Richard Clarke and Alec Baldwin as...

Jeff Daniels, late of the cancelled HBO TV series, The Newsroom, has joined The Looming Tower TV show. He'll play John O'Neill, the chief of the FBI's anti-terrorism unit in the New York field office. The upcoming Hulu drama an adaptation of Lawrence Wright's nonfiction book. Tahar Rahim was previously cast as Ali Soufan, a young FBI agent on O’Neill’s squad.The Looming Tower covers the rising threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The Hulu TV series explores whether the rivalry between the CIA and FBI could have inadvertently contributed to the tragedy of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. Writer Dan Futterman and director Alex Gibney are executive producing with Wright.Read More…...

Emmy Award winner Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom) is headed back to episodic television as the lead in Hulu’s factually-based September 11th drama, The Looming Tower – which has been ordered straight to series. The veteran actor will play John O’Neill, who was a prominent figure in the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism division in the years prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and is therefore the centre of the action for this tale of events that occurred before the catastrophic hijackings.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda And The Road To 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, the focus of the series will be the difficult relationships between the FBI and other branches of the Federal Government – in particular, the CIA – and the ways in which this hindered the counter-terrorism efforts ahead of September 11th, 2001. John O’Neill – to be played by Jeff Daniels – was the Special Agent In...

Content Media has invested in Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions for a 50% stake. The new capital will increase hiring, development and production at Jigsaw, while Content will act as international distributor for selected Jigsaw TV, film and digital content. Among Jigsaw’s forthcoming projects are a Gibney-directed film for HBO, a documentary on the Eagles directed by Alison Ellwood, a documentary on Nigerian singer Fela Kuti, a miniseries based on the Ali Soufan book “Black Banners” and a pair of scripted narrative features. One of the most highly regarded nonfiction producers in the industry, Jigsaw has produced the feature documentaries “Taxi to the Dark Side,” “Client #9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Gonzo” and “Magic Trip,” as well as long-form television projects “The Blues” and “The Fifties.” “This new...