The “redundant” movie dialogue Minnie Driver can’t stand: “I hate that line”
If you’ve been watching the latest season of Emily in Paris on Netflix, then there’s a good chance that, in between saying things like “how the hell do these people afford this stuff” and “why is she talking like that”, you’ll have spotted some British acting aristocracy in the frizzy-haired form of Minnie Driver.
The actor has been picking up some good reviews for her performance in the festival of camp consumerism and showing that she still has the chops that served her so well back in the 1990s when she was one of the leading UK lights in Hollywood.
That was when she appeared in major roles in not just one, but two superb films in the same year – 1997, those being in the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck-penned Good Will Hunting and the fantastic black comedy thriller Grosse Point Blank with John Cusack. Driver had come seemingly from nowhere to bag these leading roles, although she’d been working her way through the ranks in the UK thanks to several parts in dramas like Peak Practice and Casualty.
She made the leap to the US in 1995 and got a small part in the Pierce Brosnan Bond film Goldeneye, before landing a role in Sleepers, the underrated thriller with a star-packed cast including Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Brad Pitt. She was starting to move in the right circles, and that was underlined by her getting a leading role in Stanley Tucci’s Big Night, before the following year shot her into the limelight.
While she was undoubtedly brilliant in Cusack’s Grosse Point Blank, it was Good Will Hunting that made waves across the globe, not just for Damon and Affleck’s impeccable story and acting, but for Gus Van Sant’s directing and the supporting cast, too. Driver duly collected an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ thanks to her work as Affleck’s love interest in the film, and was nominated for several other prizes.
Although she looks back on the film fondly, it’s perhaps a surprise that one of the best-remembered moments in the movie, the argument between Damon and a cocky University student in a Boston bar that gave us one of modern movies’ great payoff lines, is not one she enjoys. Responding to a fan on X who suggested that “How’d you like them apples?” was one of the best lines in film, Driver said: “I’m sorry, but I hate that line, always have.”
Asked to qualify why that might be, she added: “I think because it’s just about male competition and totally objectifies (Driver’s character) Skylar, if not makes her actually redundant.”
Good Will Hunting was an enormous worldwide hit on release, bringing in $225million against a budget of just $15m and underlining the dramatic talents of Robin Williams, who won the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar for his performance as Dr Maguire.
Driver, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn’t maintain the levels of 1997, but has gone on to have a very respectable career, being Golden Globe nominated for her role in the American series about Irish travellers, The Riches, in 2004 and getting Emmy nominated for the 2014 drama Return to Zero.
Most recently, she’s been appearing in the mini series The Borderline from MGM+, a British police drama, and she has several movies in the works, including one called Angels in the Asylum with Simon Pegg, set in 1930s London.
