Minnie Driver will not be "just pretty paint"
You might think you know actress Minnie Driver after her long career, but her most recent project shows another side -- as she tells Anna Werner:
She's the woman who always seems to be in control, whose characters speak their mind -- very much like actress Minnie Driver herself.
Her portrayal of the outspoken Skylar opposite Matt Damon in the movie "Good Will Hunting" brought her fame, and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
She described her audition for that role as "amazing," but said "the producers didn't want me at all. And it was after this audition. I don't think they thought I was -- they didn't think I was sexy. They didn't think I was, you know, hot.
"They were probably right," she laughed, adding, "I was quite, you know ... I had other qualities."
One quality that the 44-year-old Driver has always had plenty of is determination.
Raised in Barbados and London, she attended an English boarding school. It was there, as a teenager, she decided she wanted to act.
"My idea of what it was I wanted to do was to be a storyteller, if not like a playwright, and then be in the plays that I wrote," she said. "And I definitely designed and created the idea of being an actor really early on, yeah."
That vision generated parts on British television, and then a role as a lovestruck girl in the 1995 film, "Circle of Friends."
She soon decided to leave England and move to Hollywood -- a move she believes was made easier by her unusual family background:
"My family didn't operate in the same sort of societal norms," Driver said. "My parents weren't married. My dad was married to somebody else who he didn't live with. But I grew up in a state of love, albeit unconventional. And I think it was probably a really good training ground to be able to move 7,000 miles away from my home and begin a life here in an industry that people were like, 'Are you nuts?'"
Clearly, she wasn't. Soon she was getting significant roles in a string of films, from "Big Night" to "Good Will Hunting" to "Gross Pointe Blank."
And while others her age might have taken any role that came along, she says her roles were all chosen with great care.
"If I read something, I'll know immediately when I read it: 'Can I apply myself to this?'" she said. "'And is there enough of me that I could lend to this to make it come to life,' which is what you have to do? It's just words on a page."
"And you've turned down some parts when you've said, 'I don't think I'm going to be good at that,'" said Werner.
"Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's got to have something that alights that thing in you, that makes it interesting to watch. Otherwise, you are just like pretty paint. And who the hell wants to be that, you know? I don't."
A part she definitely wanted to say "yes" to was her latest role, on the television series "About a Boy," which NBC has just renewed for a second season. In it, Driver plays the quirky single mother of an 11-year-old boy . . . something she's familiar with, because Driver herself is a single mother, raising her five-year-old son, Henry, in Los Angeles.
So how has being a mother changed her? "That whole cliche of 'Don't sweat the small stuff,' you really are too exhausted to sweat the small stuff anymore. Can't carry all that baggage. I'm carrying a diaper bag and a child. Can't carry all that other stuff as well!"
Spending time with Driver, you realize she can't sweat the small stuff, because on top of everything else she's a singer and songwriter.
She got her first recording contract at age 19. Since then, Driver has made two CDs with producer and musician Marc "Doc" Dauer. Her third CD, an album of covers of other artists' songs, comes out in September.
Werner asked, "Are people surprised to find out that you sing?"
"Yeah," she replied, "particularly in the beginning, there was a lot of raised eyebrows and 'Oh my God, this is gonna be a total car wreck.' And then the best thing to do was just invite people to shows and just say, 'Okay, well, then just come hear us play then. Just come. I'm not going to address any of your kind of snide-ery.'"
She even lent her musical talents for the closing title song of another recent project, the independent movie, "Return to Zero", which aired on Lifetime in May.
In it, Driver portrays a woman whose child is stillborn in the eighth month of pregnancy.
"I knew it would be the hardest thing I'd done," Driver said. "And it really was the very hardest job I've ever had. And I had no idea how to do it.
"All I could think of was just to show up and imagine. Imagine you're just going in for a regular checkup when you're constantly having ultrasounds. And they have a Doppler and they find the baby's heartbeat. And you hear it, and it sounds fast, and it's cute and funny and great -- how do you begin there, and you end up with the doctor looking you in the eye and saying, 'There's no heartbeat and your baby's dead'?"
When the movie's producers found they did not have the funds to complete the film, 700 families whose babies were stillborn donated money on the fundraising website Kickstarter to finish it.
"It gets me emotional talking about it," Driver said, tearing up, "'Cause no one will tell that story. I don't know, it's so strange how you can see people's heads being blown off and the kind of sexual objectification of women and all kinds of things that are empty in what they're offering up out into the world.
"And you go and tell a story that might actually bring comfort to somebody or remind you, remind us of our humanity and how what survives of us is love. That's it. That's what we got. 'Cause when you get to do that in your job, which is kind of sometimes superficial as being, like, you know, a celebrity or an actress, that is very good news."
But, Driver says, it's challenges like those that fuel everything she does -- from motherhood, to singing, to acting.
"You make it sound fun," said Werner.
"It is fun," said Driver, "and it should be fun. And if it's not fun, then you're doing it wrong. And I sort of think that about life, at this point. I really do. It's too short, there's not enough time -- and it should be fun. It should all be fun."
For more info:
- "Return to Zero" (Official site)
- "Return to Zero: Journal and Discussion Guide for Bereaved Parents (pdf)
- minniedriver.com
- Follow Minnie Driver on Twitter