22 The Times Magazineinnie Driver’s house in west
London is tall and elegant,
stuccoed, an Audi parked on the
designated space by the front
door. Through the large window
I can see her moving around
inside, tall and willowy, cup of
tea in hand. Her trademark tight
curls are pulled in loosely at the
neck, unlike the long, swishing,
silky pony she wore as an Academy guest
at this year’s notorious Oscars, with a dress
slashed to the waist and a sharp shoulder.
It has been 25 years since she was
nominated for best supporting actress for
her role in the 1997 Gus Van Sant film Good
Will Hunting, opposite her former boyfriend
Matt Damon; their romance’s beginning and
end played out in the headlines in both
America and the UK.
In the years since, the film-making has
never stopped, although mostly of the more
low-key independent kind, as well as television
roles. It is perhaps a less star-studded path
than first intended, but Driver took it partly
out of necessity and partly, she will explain,
to be a good single mother to her son, now 12.
A dog barks when I ring the bell. She
opens the door and is friendly, not at all
guarded, which is admirable given how often
she has been stitched up on the page over
the years, particularly in the early days. She
particularly hates what she calls “truth as
invective”: “She is tall and thin and eats very
little for lunch”; “Her teeth are always bared
when she smiles”; “None of her relationships
has lasted more than a year.”
The reason I am on the doorstep of her
London rental is that she has written an
extremely good – and funny – memoir,
Managing Expectations, which is about to be
published. It is part of a new phase in her
professional life, one in which she has finally
taken control of her creative destiny – and
her own story. This includes a podcast,
Minnie Questions, where she turns interviewer;
making more music (she was first in a band
all those years ago); writing scripts for herself,
creating good roles with good dialogue; and
also working towards a desire to direct.
“I love acting more than anything,
truthfully, but if the stuff you want to do is
not showing up at the moment, that can’t stop
you from being creative. Write the f***ing
book. Do the podcast. Make the record. Play
the music. If you find an audience, then great,
and you can keep paying the mortgage and
put food on the table.
“It doesn’t get any easier. One of the last
things my mum said to me before she died
[last year] was, ‘I love the grind.’ I remember
that when I wake up and go, ‘F***, where’s the
acting job? Where’s the money going to come
from to keep all the plates in the air?’ ”Driver swears a lot. Because she is so
articulate, it is actually very appealing. There
are some things about her that are quite
American (she has had American citizenship
for five years), the odd inflection and choice
of word like “dude”. But actually, her accent is
still very English and the swearing does place
her as a member, still, of the bohemian upper
middle class: “Stop swearing, it’s so lazy,” her
mother tells her in the book when, at the 1998
Oscars ceremony, simultaneously humiliated
by Matt Damon’s break-up with her live on
Oprah (where he announced he was single)
and now seeing him attend the ceremony
with Winona Ryder, she asks, “How can it be
punitive? This moment that should be ecstatic,
this rare f***ing moment, is being robbed of
all its joy because of a boy.”
Physically, Minnie Driver is virtually
unchanged from how she looked more than
two decades ago, when she was at peak starlet.
She is casual today, in loose tee and trousers
with a side stripe. She does not look anywhere
near the 52 years she is. In the book, she
explains that for years she was in the shadow
of her willowy older blonde sister, Kate (whom
she adores), who inherited the looks of their
mother, the model and designer Gaynor
Churchward. By contrast, Driver had her
famous brown curls and an unusual face,
with full cheeks and an incredible jawline,
a face and hairdo at school that earned her
nicknames such as 50p Face, Slash (from Guns
N’ Roses), Animal (from the Muppets) and
T.Rex (Marc Bolan).
Recently, as a result of the pandemic, she
has scaled down her life big-time, she says,
selling her house in Beachwood, Los Angeles,
and basing herself full-time (when not in
London) at her trailer in Malibu, overlooking
the ocean where she swims daily and surfs.
The decision came when her son, Henry,
decided he would like to attend Bedales, the
progressive Hampshire boarding school that
she went to.
Henry was conceived during a short affair
with a writer from The Riches, in which she
starred opposite Eddie Izzard (the father’s
identity prompted once again feveredM
‘SEEING MY EX, MATT
DAMON, AT THE OSCARS
WITH WINONA RYDER
WAS HIDEOUS’With her partner, Addison O’Dea, and her son, Henry, 2020With Good Will Hunting’s Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, 1997 With her parents and sister, 1998GETTY IMAGES, ALAMY