Minnie Driver attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. (Photo: FilmMagic)
Minnie Driver has enjoyed a sort of longevity in Hollywood not many actors have, but there’s one experience she considers to be the “best” of her career: Good Will Hunting. The 53-year-old star looks back at the film fondly, which comes as no surprise as it earned her an Oscar nomination in 1998.
“That genuinely is a classic,” she tells Yahoo Entertainment, explaining she and the young cast — including the Academy Award-winning film’s writers and co-stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — “didn’t really know” what kind of magic they were creating at the time.
“We were just kids just having a great time making this really fantastic story,” she continues, adding they were “exhausted, laughing, hilarious, cracking jokes on set.”
Driver, who’s promoting her new podcast, The Lesser Dead, continues: “We were just having a great time and being in love and loving each other and I don’t know, it was great.”
While making Good Will Hunting, the actress met and fell in love with Damon on set, and while the two went on to have one of Hollywood’s more infamous breakups, that clearly hasn’t tainted her view on the project 25 years later.
“It repeatedly appears in the top 100 movies, best movies ever made,” she says of the 1997 film. “It was great.”
Good Will Hunting led to another “iconic” moment in Driver’s life. The Circle of Friends star went on to score her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She calls the ruby-red Halston dress she donned to the awards show “an iconic moment in my life.”
“It’s aged really well,” she notes. “Like, I could wear that today. I think it’s in some museum somewhere.”
Minnie Driver wore Halston at the 1998 Oscars for Good Will Hunting. (Photo: WireImage)
Now, Driver enters a genre she’s previously shied away from in her decades-long career. The actress voices a character in the upcoming supernatural audio series The Lesser Dead. Set in New York City in 1978, the thrillers follows a colony of vampires led by Driver’s matriarch.
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“It’s very original and clever, and I’d never played a character like this before,” Driver says, noting she wouldn’t seek out this type of genre unless the project is “genius and brilliant.” The actress declares that “violence and horror” is “not my thing,” especially if it’s “gratuitous.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite for … the creation of violence,” Driver explains about her previous hesitation of doing a project in this genre.
“What I put out into the world is important to me,” she continues, noting how this scripted audio series falls into the category of being “a really, really good story” and she can justify her character’s violence.
Driver says it’s a “pinch me moment” that she’s “still here working.”
“I’m not addicted to anything. I’ve kept some level of sanity. I don’t have five husbands and my nose is still my nose! I feel like those are the pinch me moments,” she says, laughing, “That I’m actually just still here and recognizable.”
Driver adds, “And trust me, I do believe, like, women have had it rough. Women should do whatever it is that makes them feel comfortable. But for me, I just think having a level of sanity this far into a career in Hollywood — I’m astonished by that!”
The Lesser Dead will debut Monday, March 27 exclusively on Wondery+.