Minnie Driver is recalling the "devastating" experience of being told by a producer she was not "hot enough" for the 1997 film "Good Will Hunting."
The 52-year-old actor first opened up about the ordeal several years ago and circled back to the topic in a new interview with The Cut. Driver, who played Skylar opposite Matt Damon's "Good Will Hunting," would go on to receive her first Academy Award nomination for the role but appearing in the film threatened to destroy her confidence as a woman.
"It was devastating," Driver told The Cut. "To be told at 26 that you're not sexy when you maybe just got over all your teenage angst and started to think, you know, maybe in the right light and the right shoes and the right dress, I'm all right."
Driver said she already had insecurities growing up about not being "gorgeous" or "super pretty."
"The idea that that was the currency I was then meant to pursue, and I was meant to try and find ways of making myself prettier," she said. "I thank God that I didn't do a ton of stuff that I could have then gone and done. It could have been way more damaging than it was."
She added, at the time, "I had such a lovely family going, 'F*** that. You're gorgeous on all these levels. And if one person doesn't think that you're pretty enough, f*** it.'"
Driver first revealed her story to Andy Cohen in 2016 during an episode of "Watch What Happens Live."
"I really can't [name names] because then I'll never work again, and I have to work because I have a mortgage," Driver said at the time, according to People.
She then explained an unnamed producer "did not think I was hot enough to be in that film and did not want me in the film."
Fortunately, Driver said her co-stars Damon and Ben Affleck as well as director Gus Van Sant "fought very hard" for her to be in the movie and to this day she is "very grateful."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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