Minnie Driver is reflecting on how she navigated her breakup with Good Will Hunting costar Matt Damon.
“Oh my God, my little face!” Driver, 54, said when shown a picture of herself during Damon’s Oscar win for the 1997 film during the Thursday, March 14, episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show. “First of all, I want to wrap my arms around that young woman and hug her and go, ‘It’s all going to be fine. Like, honey, don’t worry.’”
Driver dated Damon, 53, from 1997 to early 1998 before he publicly proclaimed on a talk show that he was “single.” Weeks later, the pair reunited at the Oscars when they were both nominated for their roles in Good Will Hunting. (Damon also cowrote the script with longtime friend Ben Affleck.)
“He had a new girlfriend [and] I was totally heartbroken, but anyone who’s been heartbroken can understand the last thing you want is everybody having a window in on that,” she recalled to host Jennifer Hudson.
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A social media user posted footage of the 1998 Academy Awards in December 2023 and Driver commented, noting that she was grieving their relationship at the time.
“It was so public, so when I [recently] commented [on Instagram], it was … I just saw the clip,” Driver explained on Thursday. “I hadn’t seen the clip, I don’t know that I’d ever seen it. I’d never seen my face [and] the reaction when they won.”
She continued, “They cut to me because it was a camera right in the face of the poor, young 25-year-old girl who’s about to burst into tears and it was so raw and vulnerable that I commented, “Gosh, I was devastated. Wish I could have celebrated more as it was such an amazing moment.’ Which it was.”
On Thursday, she further detailed the advice she would give her younger self in that moment.
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“From this vantage point, 20/20 vision, much later in my life, I wish I could have told her, ‘Honey, it’s cool. You can celebrate and life’s going to be great and beautiful and hard and amazing and you’re going to love again. It’ll be fine,’” Driver added. “Listen, our heartbreak is private and then if you’re an actress, it can be very public, so maybe just all of us relating to each other a bit more as humans and that we have these similar experiences through different lenses.”
Damon eventually moved on with Luciana Barroso, whom he wed in December 2005. They share three daughters together: Isabella, Gia and Stella. He is also stepfather to Barroso’s daughter from a previous relationship, Alexia. Driver, for her part, is mom to son Henry, 15, and has been dating filmmaker Addison O’Dea since 2019.
Driver and Damon reunited for the first time since their split in 2021.
“I did see Matt Damon on the beach and I had not had a conversation with him, seriously, since we made the film,” Driver said during a September 2021 episode of the “Keep It” podcast. “That was last summer and it was actually very nice to see him, and his kids and his wife, and it all felt quite middle-aged actually, which was reassuring.”
She concluded, “I feel like so much of the folly of youth went on with our initial relationship, like it was amazing and tabloidy. So that was nice to just have sort of a middle-aged conversation about the weather and stuff.”
