Minnie Driver and Matt Damon were one of the most talked-about couples of the nineties, dating for a year after meeting on the set of 1997's Good Will Hunting.
It is their break up that made the most news however, with Damon announcing that he was single during an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
“I don’t care who you are, that is agony and it’s like a strange, surreal dream,' Driver has previously told Entertainment Tonight about their public split, later adding: “It’s so tricky, because it’s not deliberate, he couldn’t have helped how famous he became and how his life was being picked over, in the same way that mine was."
This week, Driver, now 54, appeared on The Jennifer Hudson Show, and while discussing the break up, they referenced the 1997 Oscars, where the actress, then 25, is filmed looking heartbroken while Damon won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay with Good Will Hunting. This Driver has explained was because Damon had "ended [their] relationship a few weeks before" and "was at the Oscars with his new girlfriend".
“I wish I could have told [myself], ‘Honey it’s cool, you can celebrate and life’s gonna be great and beautiful and hard and amazing. You’re going to love again, it’ll be fine,'" Driver explained. “My little face, [I would] wrap my arms around that young woman and hug her and go, ‘It’s all going to be fine honey, don’t worry.’"
“I was devastated,” she continued. “I wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film!”
This is not the first time that Driver has opened up about the split, writing in her book, Managing Expectations that her family had voiced their concerns after the success of Good Will Hunting.
“My family loved Matt – it wasn’t that,” she explained in one personal essay. “It was that they could see that this young man was rocketing really fast and so was I, and when you’re young, it’s pretty hard to keep your head on straight and to maintain a grounded sense of deportment.
“They were like, ‘This may well end badly for reasons that are to do with all these things coming together in a perfect storm. And also, like, you shouldn’t date someone you work with.'”
We will continue to update this story.
