Maybe you'd forgotten that Minnie Driver and Matt Damon used to date, but Minnie Driver sure hasn't.
On a resurfaced clip of Damon and Ben Affleck accepting their Oscar for Good Will Hunting, one commenter asked why Driver, who is briefly shown gazing somberly at the stage while she gets a shout-out for her performance in the movie, appears so glum. Glad you asked, commenter! Because Driver actually took the time to respond in full, and it has to do with her breakup with Damon.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
“Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this, and was at the Oscars with his new gf,” Driver wrote. “I was devastated. Wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film!” That girlfriend being, per InStyle, Winona Ryder.
But Driver has never exactly been shy when talking about this particular breakup and how it affected her. She has long contended, for instance, that she didn't know they were broken up until Damon announced it on Oprah. Reflecting on that particular Academy Awards, Driver told Entertainment Tonight in a 2022 interview, “The cameraman at the Academy Awards—he'd literally been told to, like, stay on me and he was so in my grill, he was like a wildlife photographer waiting for the kill. He was just waiting for the moment that I was going to break or something was going to happen, or I was going to get up and scream. He'd been told, ‘Stay on her, bud. Something's gonna happen.’”
And that's the story of how we have a video of Minnie Driver looking incredibly depressed at the 1998 Academy Awards.
