25 years later, Minnie Driver recalls “Good Will Hunting”: “We were simply having a lovely time, being in love and enjoying each other.” 2023
Minnie Driver has achieved a level of longevity in Hollywood that is uncommon among performers, yet she considers Good Will Hunting to be the “greatest” experience of her career. The 53-year-old actress recalls the 1998 picture warmly, which is hardly surprising given that it garnered her an Oscar nomination.
“It truly is a masterpiece,” she tells Yahoo, adding that she and the youthful actors, including Oscar-winning screenwriters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, “didn’t really know” what sort of magic they were producing at the time.
Minnie Driver recalls “Good Will Hunting
“We were just kids having a great time creating a truly beautiful narrative,” she says, adding that they were “exhausted, giggling, and cracking jokes on set.”
Driver, who is promoting her new podcast The Lesser Dead, continues: “We were just having a fantastic time and enjoying one other and being in love, and I don’t know, it was amazing.”
The actress met and fell in love with Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, and despite the fact that they went on to have one of Hollywood’s most iconic breakups, it hasn’t affected her opinion of the film 25 years later.
“It frequently appears on lists of the finest 100 films ever produced,” she adds of the 1997 picture. That was fantastic.
Good Will Hunting caused Driver to have another “iconic” event in his life. The actress from Circle of Friends received her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She describes the crimson Halston outfit she wore as “a defining event in my life.”
“That has aged quite beautifully,” she remarks. “I could actually wear that today. I believe it is in a museum someplace.”
Today, Driver ventures into a genre she has avoided throughout her decades-long career. In the forthcoming eerie audio drama The Lesser Dead, the actress lends her voice to a character. The thrillers are set in New York City in 1978 and follow a colony of vampires commanded by Driver’s mother.
“I’ve never played a character like this before,” Driver adds, adding that she wouldn’t seek out this particular genre unless the film was “intelligent and wonderful.” The actress states that “violence and horror” are “not my thing,” especially when they are “extra.”
“I don’t have much of a taste for… the manufacture of violence,” Driver confesses of her earlier reluctance to work in this genre.
“What I put out into the world is essential to me,” she says, stressing that her written audio series is “a very, really wonderful tale” and that she can thus excuse her character’s violent behavior.
Driver expresses surprise that she is “still here working.”
“I am not dependent on anything. I’ve preserved some kind of sanity. I do not have five spouses, and my nose still belongs to me! “I feel like my nose is pinching me when I realize that I’m still here and identifiable,” she chuckles.”
Driver continues, “And believe me, I really believe women have had it difficult, like. Ladies should perform whatever makes them feel most at ease. Having a modicum of rationality this late in a Hollywood career, though, surprises me!”
