Every Movie Portrayal Of Enzo Ferrari, Ranked

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Ferrari!

In Michael Mann’s Ferrari, Adam Driver is the latest actor to portray Enzo Ferrari, the Italian racecar driver turned founder of both the famous Ferrari automobile company and the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, but other actors have portrayed Il Commendatore over the years. Ferrari once drove for, and managed, the Alfa Romeo racing team before creating Ferrari out of the ashes of wartorn Italy, and Mann showcases a master engineer and tactician struggling to keep his legacy alive by winning the Mille Miglia. Unfortunately, the tumultuous nature of his personal life threatens to break him before he can cross the finish line.

It took Michael Mann 31 years to get Ferrari made, with actors like Hugh Jackman previously attached to the role, but Driver was selected in 2022 and the film finally picked up speed. While divisive parties contend that Ferrari has inaccuracies, and an American actor shouldn’t play an Italian icon like Ferrari, Driver is an appropriate A-list star to give the movie gravitas, and by the end of Ferrari, it’s clear that he hasn’t just been replicating his accent or even his performance in House of Gucci. Weighing every Ferrari performance, the best version of Enzo Ferrari not only captures the man’s legacy but also the flawed man behind it.

Gabriel Byrne In Lamborghini: The Man Behind The Legend (2022)

As the story goes in the automotive world, Lamborghini owned a Ferrari at one time and approached Enzo Ferrari about issues with the clutch, and after being so insulted by the carmaker’s hostile reception to his recommendations, went home and made his own, superior automobile and Lamborghini was born. Lamborghini: The Man Behind The Legend is about Lamborghini but couldn’t be told without Ferrari, and Gabriel Byrne, with icy determination, highlights Enzo’s greatest asset to the world of motorsport: upsetting rivals like Ford, Lamborghini and Shelby enough to challenge them to create something better; without Ferrari, the Ford GT might not even exist.

Augusto Dall’ara In Rush (2013)

Rush focuses primarily on the rivalry between Austrian Formula One driver Niki Lauda (who drove for Ferrari) and Briton James Hunt during the Golden Age of Formula 1 racing. It challenges expectations and preconceptions about the nature of the two famous racers as each man’s innermost demons are revealed on the road to glory, beginning with the German Grand Prix in Nurburgring. Given that it takes place a little more than 10 years before his death, Augusto Dall’ara portrays Ferrari as a cold elder statesman of the automotive world, with ruthless demands on Lauda, and maintains historical accuracy by not speaking any English (Ferrari’s son often Piero translated for him).

Remo Girone In Ford v Ferrari (2019)

In Ford v Ferrari, Remo Girone plays Enzo Ferrari in the mid-’60s, when the master carmaker was trying to infuse his struggling company with funding. Ferrari was courting offers from Ford Motor Company as well as Fiat S.p.A, and after the deal with Ford went sour, the two brands competed against one another at the 1966 Le Mans race. Girone does well showcasing the automotive titan’s hubris as the reigning champion facing the upstart challenger Ford, though the film does have a few glaring inaccuracies taken to increase the melodrama (Ferrari didn’t sell 50% of the company to Fiat until 1969, not in 1963 after declining Ford’s buyout offer).

Sergio Castellitto In Ferrari (2003)

Surprisingly, even with a robust film industry, Italy has only made a handful of media about Ferrari, including the 2003 miniseries Ferrari starring Sergio Castellitto. Throughout two parts, the series follows Ferrari from his racing days driving for Alfa Romeo up to founding his own company, interspersed with highlights of his personal life. Castellitto has a challenging performance stretched over decades to accomplish, but he doesn’t shy away from taking on the task of showing so many facets of Ferrari’s character. If anything, however, the miniseries romanticizes Ferrari in a way that borders on idolatry, without focusing on his flaws or the more reprehensible qualities that gave him complexity.

Adam Driver In Ferrari (2023)

With his towering frame (Ferrari was also 6’2″) and the tactical acumen of a military general, Adam Driver fully embodies Il Commendatore. While Enzo never spoke English, Driver employs a restrained Italian accent suggestive enough not to seem out of place among his costars, and he gives context to why a broken man in the wake of watching so many loved ones die (racing friends, his son Dino, and his drivers) would have to become a calculating titan to continue doing the “terrible joy” that he loved. No other Ferrari performance has gotten under the hood to capture the fire in the engine the way Driver does in Ferrari.

Ferrari