Minnie Driver has loved a type of longevity in Hollywood not many actors have, however there’s one expertise she considers to be the “best” of her profession: Good Will Hunting. The 53-year-old star seems again at the film fondly, which comes as no shock because it earned her an Oscar nomination in 1998.
“That genuinely is a classic,” she tells Yahoo, explaining she and the younger forged — together with the Academy Award-winning film’s writers and co-stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — “didn’t really know” what sort of magic they have been creating at the time.
“We were just kids just having a great time making this really a fantastic story,” she continues, including they have been “exhausted, laughing, hilarious, cracking jokes on set.”
Driver, who’s selling 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 whereas the two went on to have certainly one of Hollywood’s extra notorious breakups, that clearly hasn’t tainted her view on the mission 25 years later.
“It repeatedly appears on sort of in the top 100 movies, best movies ever made,” she says of the 1997 film. “It was great.”
Good Will Hunting led to a different “iconic” second in Driver’s life. The Circle of Friends star went on to attain her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She calls the ruby-red Halston gown she donned “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.”
Now, Driver enters a style she’s beforehand shied away from in her decades-long profession. The actress voices a character in the upcoming supernatural audio sequence The Lesser Dead. Set in New York City in 1978, the thrillers follows a colony of vampires led by Driver’s matriarh.
“It’s very original and clever, and I’d never played a character like this before,” Driver says, noting she would not search out such a style until the mission is “genius and brilliant.” The actress declares that “violence and horror” is “not my thing,” particularly if it is “gratuitous.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite for … the creation of violence,” Driver explains about her earlier hesitation of doing a mission on this style.
“What I put out into the world is important to me,” she continues, noting how this scripted audio sequence falls into the class of being “a really, really good story” and she will be able to justify her character’s violence.
Driver says it is 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 nose are the pinch me moments,” she laughs, “That I’m actually just still here and recognizable.”
Driver provides, “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 March 27 completely on Wondery+.
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