Minnie Driver has revealed the advice she would give her 25-year-old self after her devastating break-up with Matt Damon back in 1998.
The actress, now 54, who famously looked downcast as she watched her ex accept an Oscar for their film Good Will Hunting in 1998, discussed her heartbreak when she appeared on Thursday’s episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show.
After Hudson commented Driver’s expression ‘made a lot of headlines’, the British star said: ‘I wish I could have told her, “Honey it’s great, you can celebrate and life is going to be great and beautiful and hard and great,
“You will love again, it will be fine.”
Driver and Damon started a relationship after starring as love interests in the film, but went their separate ways their year-long whirlwind romance in 1998.
Minnie Driver has revealed the advice she would give her 25-year-old self after her devastating split with Matt Damon back in 1998 (pictured 1997)
The actress, now 54, who famously looked downcast as she watched her ex accept an Oscar for their film Good Will Hunting in 1998, discussed her heartbreak when she appeared on Thursday’s episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show
By the time the Oscars rolled around, Damon had already moved on with a new girlfriend who attended the ceremony with him.
In October, a video of Driver’s heartbroken expression at the Oscars resurfaced
Damon and Ben Affleck were seen accepting an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and featured a glimpse of Driver grimly watching her co-stars while Affleck gave her a shout out in their speech.
After a fan commented that Driver looked ‘so sad’ at the ceremony, the actress jumped into the comments section to explain her appearance.
‘Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this and was at the Oscars with his new girlfriend… I was devastated. I wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us and for this wonderful film!’ Driver commented.
The mother of a driver has been dating Addison O’Dea since 2019. As for Damon, 53, he has been married to Luciana Bozán since 2005 and the couple share three daughters.
The world learned that Damon and Driver had called it quits after the actor revealed their split on The Oprah Winfrey Show, saying: ‘Well, I’m single. I was with Minnie for a while, but we’re not really romantically involved anymore, we’re just really good friends. I love her very much.’
‘I like her very much. We love each other very much. It wasn’t meant to be, and if it wasn’t meant to be, then it’s not meant to be.’
Damon and Driver featured in their critically acclaimed film Good Will Hunting and sparked a genuine romance
Damon and Ben Affleck were seen accepting an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and featured a glimpse of Driver grimly watching his co-stars while Affleck gave her a shout out in their speech
After a fan commented that Driver looked ‘so sad’ at the ceremony, the actress jumped into the comments section to explain her appearance. ‘Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this and was at the Oscars with his new girlfriend… I was devastated’
Driver hit back in a subsequent interview with Los Angeles Times: ‘It’s unfortunate that Matt went on Oprah; it seemed like a good forum for him to announce to the world that we were no longer together, which I found incredibly inappropriate.’
“Of course he was busy declaring his love for me on David Letterman a month earlier,” she said.
In 2022, the actress appeared on ITV’s This Morning, where she told Phillip Schofield and Rochelle Humes about her public split from Matt: “It was dramatically reported, but I wouldn’t change it for a second.”
Minnie spoke to Chris Evans on the Sky Breakfast Show where she opened up about her time in Hollywood and their romance during that time.
She said: ‘Matt Damon was just this lovely, talented, amazing person who was also very young and became famous very quickly. And people don’t always behave well in situations where you are under pressure.
‘It was a very sweet romance we had. And I really look back on it with such fondness, no matter how it ended. It was just kind of dramatic and tabloidy and was really incredible.’
Damon, 53, he has been married to Luciana Bozán since 2005 and the couple share three daughters – he attended Sunday’s Vanity Fair Oscar party, which Driver was also at.
Driver has been dating Addison O’Dea since 2019
She recalled what it was like to find out he was dating other people through the press: ‘At the time it was weird walking down the supermarket aisle with magazine covers in stereo of him making out with his new girlfriend after we had broken up.
‘We really liked each other, we were really good friends at the time. And they let us improvise a lot, that was very real, the way we spoke to each other.’
The actress cemented her rise to fame with 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which earned her an Academy Award nomination.
Minnie also spoke about the romance while promoting her memoir Managing Expectations last year TODAY.
The actress wrote that she was advised by her mother to love Damon ‘hands off’ – but Driver insisted her parents were big fans of the actor.
“They loved Matt,” Minnie said on the show. ‘It was really being with an actor who was rising at a rate of knots like I was and that’s super combustible, as you know, teacher Phil Hook would say.
‘It was just a recipe for not necessarily disaster, but flammability, and everyone is moving at a speed of knots. They wanted me to just settle down and not be in love as well as become famous.’