Minnie Driver had no good will for Matt Damon at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony.
It’s been over two decades since the couple split, but the actress is opening up about the devastation she felt in the aftermath of their relationship.
Damon and Driver, both 53, started dating in 1997 after they played lovers in the critically acclaimed film “Good Will Hunting,” which also starred Ben Affleck and Robin Williams.
The romance was brief and ended just shortly before the 1998 Oscar awards ceremony where the film received nine nominations.
Damon and Affleck took home the gold statue for Best Original Screenplay, but during their acceptance speech, cameras caught Driver looking less than enthusiastic.
After a throwback clip of Driver’s gloomy facial expression while sitting in the audience went viral on the Movie Shmood Instagram account, the actress reacted in the comments section after one fan remarked that “Minnie looks so sad.”
“My face 😂😂😂😂❤️,” she wrote in an image captured and shared by the Comments By Celebs page,
“Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this, and was at the Oscars with his new girlfriend… I was devastated,” Driver explained. “Wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film!”
Damon famously announced his split with Driver on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
“Well, I’m single,” Damon said on the nationally televised talk show. “I was with Minnie for a while, but we’re not really romantically involved anymore. We’re just really good friends, and I love her dearly….I care about her a lot. We care about each other a lot. It wasn’t meant to be, you know? And if it’s not meant to be, then it’s not meant to be.”
In July of the same year, Driver revealed in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that she was disappointed that the “Oppenheimer” actor went public with the news.
“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 fantastically inappropriate,” she said. “Of course, he was busy declaring his love for me on David Letterman a month previously.”
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight just last year the actress reflected on the breakup once again and described the whole ordeal as one that caused “agony” in her life.
“I don’t care who you are, that is agony and it’s like a strange, surreal dream.” Driver explained. “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.”
The “Rosaline” actress added, “It’s funny now, when I think about walking down the magazine aisle in my local supermarket at midnight with my best friend, we were like, ‘Are you seeing this? This is super weird.’ My friend, Alexandra was like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening, like, I feel like we’re in a movie. I would totally watch this movie, even though I know you’re super heartbroken, but this is really weird.’ “
Despite the drama both actors have happily moved on from the split.
The “Jason Bourne” actor married Luciana Barroso in 2005 and the couple share three daughters: Isabella, 17, Gia, 14, and Stella, 12 and stepdaughter Alexia Barroso, 24.
Driver has been in a committed relationship with with filmmaker Addison O’Dea and she is mom to son Henry, 14, with ex Timothy J. Lea.
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