Minnie Driver thought how Matt Damon announced their split was 'fantastically inappropriate'
Topics: Celebrity, Matt Damon
Anish Vij
Featured Image Credit: Alamy/Allstar Picture Library/United Archives GmbH
Topics: Celebrity, Matt Damon
Minnie Driver and Matt Damon used to be an item after starring together in 1997's iconic Good Will Hunting, but when their relationship came to an end, Driver didn't agree with the way Damon announced it.
The hit movie quickly provided Damon with superstar status while his relationship with Driver started to gather widespread attention.
Driver has since admitted that she was 'completely in love' with Matt at the time.
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“I was blown away by his commitment to me as an actor, he was cute and intelligent and altogether a really charming package,” she told The Telegraph.
“I was young and I fell for him — it’s an occupational hazard.”
After meeting sometime in 1996, the pair were pictured together up to a year later.
However, what people remember from that time is not the relationship itself, but the awkwardness of how it ended.
While promoting the film on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Damon dropped an absolute bombshell.
The actor shocked viewers when he announced he was single - but the woman who was shocked more than anyone else was his supposed girlfriend Driver.
She told the LA Times that the announcement was 'fantastically inappropriate'.
Amid all the media coverage, Driver also told Entertainment Tonight: “I don’t care who you are, that is agony and it’s like a strange, surreal dream. But I know he didn’t put that picture there.
“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.
“My family loved Matt – it wasn’t that.
“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.”
Damon - who co-wrote Good Will Hunting alongside Ben Affleck - famously won Best Original Screenplay at the 1998 Oscars.
For those unaware, the film follows Will Hunting (Matt Damon), with a genius-level IQ, who chooses to work as a janitor at MIT.
His talents are discovered by Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard), who wants the misguided youth to reach his potential.
But when Will is arrested for attacking a police officer, Professor Lambeau makes a deal with cops that he will get treatment from therapist Sean Maguire (Robin Williams).
Minnie Driver plays a young woman (Skylar) who he met at a bar near Harvard.