Minnie Driver says she is still ‘defined’ by relationship with Matt Damon
By Hannah Roberts, PA Entertainment Reporter
British actress Minnie Driver has said she is still “defined by a 25-year-old relationship” with actor Matt Damon, who was her co-star in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting.
Driver played Skylar, who dated Damon’s character Will, and the actors went on to date in real life, before Damon announced he was single during an Oprah Winfrey interview in 1998.
Talking about her relationship with Damon, Driver told Good Morning Britain: “Matt is amazing and has had this amazing career and I’ve had this amazing career and it was this, this lovely fragment of sweetness when we were really young, and everything was beginning.”
She went on: “We do tend to establish women within the context of who they have been in relationships with. I find that a bit annoying and reductive.
“But for me, the answer has always just been to do more. You write books, you make more music, you make more films and television, you answer all of that noise with your brightness and your interest.”
When Good Will Hunting was released it received an Academy Award for best original screenplay, among other gongs.
In spite of her many film and TV credits, the actress said that she never felt like she “fit” the Hollywood ideal.
Driver said: “The box, which is the sort of expectation, I never quite fit into.
“I don’t really think I fit into it in Hollywood or anywhere and in a way, getting older is about realising that that’s so fine and actually so great and idiosyncratic and that we try to typicalise everything.”
Talking about the “nonsensical” idea of the “difficult” woman, Driver added: “It is created to suppress women.
“Particularly in the 90s, you were over sexualised and underappreciated and not expected to speak out and if you did speak out about anything, you were branded shrill, feisty, difficult, outspoken. I love and also loathe those words when they are used in the context of women.”
The Circle Of Friends actress also discussed her 2022 memoir, Managing Expectations, which explores themes of motherhood, relationships and acting.
Driver’s other credits include TV shows The Witcher: Blood Origin, Will And Grace, About A Boy and the 2021 movie musical Cinderella.