Minnie Driver says she was “devastated” while attending the 1998 Academy Awards just weeks after her split from Matt Damon.
The actress, 53, recently left a comment on an Instagram reel that showed the moment Damon, 53, and Ben Affleck accepted their award for Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting. In the video, the camera shows a noticeably deadpan Driver in the audience, watching her ex and Affleck, 51, accept their award.
“My face 😂😂😂😂❤️,” the actress commented underneath the video, which was shared by the Instagram account @movieshmood.
As Driver was shown in the audience looking crestfallen, Affleck and Damon were acknowledging her performance in the film, which Affleck called “brilliant.”
When one commenter pointed out, however, that Driver — who portrayed Skylar in the movie — looked unhappy, she responded by explaining her expression.
“Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this, and was at the Oscars with his new gf… I was devastated,” the Grosse Pointe Blank star wrote. “Wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film ! ♥️”
While the Instagram interaction took place weeks ago, it was reshared on the social media platform Tuesday by the popular account Comments By Celebs. Damon and Driver had met while filming the Oscar-winning movie and dated from 1997 to 1998, just weeks before the Academy Awards as Driver mentioned in her comment.
Following their incredibly public breakup, Damon went on to date Beetlejuice star Winona Ryder. The couple initially met in December 1997 while he was still with Driver and they dated from 1998 to 2000.
Twenty-five years later, Driver says she is not bitter about the end of their relationship.
In May 2022, while promoting her book, Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essay, she talked with ET about her short-lived relationship with her co-star.
Driver told ET that while their love affair was “sweet,” it ultimately combusted before the movie hit the awards show circuit, something she said her family predicted.
“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,” Driver explained.
“They were like, ‘This may well end badly for reasons that are to do with all these things coming together in a perfect storm,'” she continued.
Driver also said the way that the breakup played out in the tabloids added to the pain of the situation and called it “agony” living through that moment of her life.
“I don’t care who you are, that is agony and it’s like a strange, surreal dream,” she said. “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.”
Driver ultimately settled down in 2018 with filmmaker Addison O’Dea and the couple recently celebrated their five-year anniversary together.
For his part, Damon went on to marry Luciana Barroso in 2005 and the pair has welcomed three daughters together. They also share Barroso’s oldest daughter from a previous marriage.
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