How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S14, Ep2 How To Fail: Minnie Driver

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Ugh. Today's guest is just SO GOOD. Minnie Driver, actress, musician and writer, was nominated for an Academy Award for Good Will Hunting and later starred in TV shows such as Will & Grace and Starstruck. Her (brilliant) debut book is called Managing Expectations and is described as a ‘tell-most memoir’. In her own words, it’s about how things not working out actually worked out in the end.She joins me to talk about her failures in acting, her failure to get an agent or to perform a convincing orgasm at an audition (a crash course in sexism in the industry), her run-ins with Harvey Weinstein, her experiences in the fakery of Hollywood and how that affected her mental health, and her self-perceived failure to get married. We also touch on the death of her beloved mother, becoming a single parent herself and what it means to be a fully-realised woman in her 50s. I adored this conversation - Minnie is so wise and eloquent and has really, truly spent time thinking about what life means. As such, she's the most perfectly imperfect guest.--Minnie's memoir-ish, Managing Expectations is out now: https://www.waterstones.com/book/managing-expectations/minnie-driver/2928377083793--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpod Minnie Driver @driverminnie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest today was one of the breakout stars of 90s cinema. She was Benny in Circle of Friends, starred opposite John Cusack in Gross Point Blank, and was nominated for an Oscar for Good Will Hunting. Her later career took her to television, where she's acted with Eddie Izzard in The Riches, had a recurring role in Will & Grace, and appears in a string of hit shows, including Modern Love and Starstruck. She was always unique in the airbrushed superficiality of Hollywood. Her beauty was not blonde or bland. Instead, she arrived on the scene with a mass of brown curls, unapologetic freckles,

and a straightforward compulsion to tell the truth. I felt like the last thing I'd actually intended was to become an actress, she writes in her new memoir. Everything subsequently was luck and circumstance, occurrences carved by the agency of something other than me. She was born in London, but raised in Barbados with her older sister until the age of seven. Her mother was not married to her father because he already had a wife, an early taste of the complexity of human relationships that was to stand her in good stead. She was called Amelia, but it was her sister Kate who gave her the nickname Minnie. It stuck, and she's now known as Minnie Driver. It's under this name that she will be publishing her debut book, Managing Expectations. Described as a tell-most memoir, it is truthful, funny and wise. In her own words,

it's about how things not working out actually worked out in the end. As such, she could not be more perfect for this podcast. Minnie Driver, welcome to How to Fail. It's very nice to be here. I am failure incarnate. Well, you're amongst friends here. And you know already, because I sent you like a super gush email after reading Managing Expectations, how much I loved it. I really, really loved it because it so tannies with everything that I think about life. And I think the title is great, but I wanted to ask you about it. You called it Managing Expectations. Do you think you've had to manage more your own expectations or other people's? I think it's both. It's 100%. It's both. It was sort of ironic, the title as well,

that my mother used to say that the word any expectation should be taken out back and buried in a big deep hole, because it's what confounds us as humans and sets us back time and time again is the idea of something being expected and going a certain way and then living in the schism of it potentially not working out. So the Buddhic idea of don't expect anything and just be in the moment, except that's how one should live. But you know, you can't really do that all the time, I don't think. So managing expectations was about managing the expectations that I have of myself, that my parents had of me, that society had of me as a woman, as a lover,

as a sister, as a friend, and how it doesn't work out, but the realization or the slow realization that that is actually fine. And that is actually pretty much the whole of life. Yeah. What's the first expectation that you can remember having of yourself? Because I'm always so intrigued as to how girls of a certain era were raised. And I know you had an incredibly strong, extraordinary mother, and we'll get onto her. But you and I were raised in the 80s and 90s, and there was a certain expectation for young girls to be a certain way. Can you remember what the earliest ones were around you? I do remember expecting people to listen to me and them not, and them not listening. Like that felt astonishing to me. And I say that with a

real, you know, with the real sort of clarity that a child has, like a small child at around five or six, I felt that I was some sort of herald, but I thought everybody was. I thought that what you had to say, of course people would want to listen to it. And I was astonished when I would constantly be put in my room or dragged out of restaurants and put in the car with the window cracked like I was a naughty dog for saying things because I wanted people to hear what I had to say. So I do remember that very early on and being astonished that people didn't want to listen. I think it's quite interesting. Again, I use the word schism quite a lot because it is just part of every single actor on the planet. That's what you sort of act from is this

gap. But then I suppose I found a way of turning that into a job where people actually pay money to listen to you, although you're not really saying your own words. Did that feeling of frustration last through your childhood? Yeah, I mean, that was part of my whole, I won't use the word problem, but that was my challenge, was that I had huge emotions and great emotional articulation, but it was too much or too time consuming or it asked too much of the adults around me. I think they saw it as an indulgence, whereas I could sit listening to a kid talk about what they think about things for hours. I love that purview. But like you said, it was a different time. You know, my father was born in 1921. He did not expect me to make as much noise as I did.

And your father was a war hero, wasn't he? He was, yeah. He flew in the first great and terrible failed battle of the Second World War, the Battle of Heligoland Bight, which was the first and last day raid that the RAF flew because everybody died except my father and about four other men, all of which he saved. And that was at 18. He survived. His idea of life, the stakes were a lot higher and he had very low tolerance for emotion. And that was unfortunately or fortunately where I was calibrated. There's this quote in your book about emotion and you write, I've always found it impossible to suppress emotion, which can be exhausting, messy and empowering in unequal measure, depending on your perspective. I love that. It's true. massively overstepping already, sort of 10 minutes in the interview. But I remember making a decision as a 10 or 11 year old that I was going to be emotional and tactile and I was going to tell people that I loved them. You decided that. I love that. That's a really conscious memory.

Well, I think it's because I know that my parents love me. But again, it's a generational thing where tactility wasn't necessarily the way that one expressed one's love and verbosity wasn't either. You just kind of had to know it was there. And I wonder if you felt that too, that there was a big space for you to emote into and you were going to do that. Oh, definitely. Definitely, definitely. My parents were not emotional people. They did not deal in that naturally. And I think they were bewildered by my emotion. And I do think it was exhausting for them. It's so tricky. What I see now is nobody was wrong. It was like they needed training. They needed someone to tell them, listen, this is how you accommodate who this child is as opposed

to constantly trying to get me to shut up which sometimes worked but mostly didn't so the book opens with this extraordinary scene when you're nine and the backdrop is that your mother has left your father in 1976 which was the year women were finally allowed to apply for a mortgage in the UK without a male co-signer. I mean, well, that was pretty astonishing to read. And a judge had decreed that in order to retain custody of you and your sister, your mother had to be married to have bought a house and to have her daughters in school.

And she had to do that in seven weeks. Yeah. And she did it, didn't she? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, she did it. Yeah hundred percent. So I was six in 1976. So that's when that happened. And it, I mean, it was pretty awful. Me and my sister had absolutely no idea what was happening. And we had been living in Barbados and in London. We'd been staying that summer with friends, not knowing anything that was going on between my parents. And then we suddenly arrived at this tumbling down cottage, which, I mean,

I suppose it's picturesque, but it was an absolute shithole. I mean, it was falling to pieces. There was barely indoor plumbing. It was very damp and it was cold. And we were summarily told that this is where we were going to live now. And it was quite a shock. She managed to get you into B-Dales. And it was there that you found that you loved performing. Can you tell us a bit about that discovery? discovery well the thing was arriving at beadales was arriving finally into a place that could accommodate the sort of largesse of my creativity in a way i mean emotion they didn't balk at it they helped me find ways to express it and they gave me myriad ways to do that i mean that's not

to say i didn't drive a lot of those teachers mad. I know I did. But it could accommodate that. That was what is and was so beautiful about that school is that they expand to accommodate the individuality of children. There is no notion of a one size fits all. And I suddenly found myself in a place where I was encouraged to write and to devise plays, to write poetry, to stand up and say it if I wanted to, to do that in class or in an assembly, to be part of plays and musicals and recitals. I mean, it was endless, the opportunity to perform. The feeling there was creative expression and creative thought creates critical thinkers. It doesn't matter if you want to be a physicist or if you want to be an actor. It's how you articulate ideas. built. And you say it's such an evocative chapter, you're such an evocative writer, but you say that that was the first time that you had this powerful feeling of being able to create and simultaneously affect change. And that the conflation of those responses will be,

and these are your words, and not that I will struggle to unpick for the rest of my life. Because I think the thing that comes out so vividly from the pages of this book is that you are a truth teller. What's that like in Hollywood? That was terrible. Oh my God, it's terrible. It's why, you know, it's probably, you know, why I'm not a massive movie star. It's like, I can't keep my mouth shut when you're supposed to keep your mouth shut and just do the thing. I wish there had been someone to say, you don't have to do it all the time. It's okay. You could sit this one out and go and make that film and just let it be a huge commercial success, even though it's rubbish. Tons of people will see it and you'll get paid

loads of money and then you'll be able to go and do whatever you want to do. I couldn't play the game as well as I might have. The people that I've met and that I've worked with who actually appreciate whatever clarity I bring to things, they are amazing and they utilize the insistence on truth, which I think is a very, I know it sounds a bit poncy, but it is very important if you're an actor to be able to get at the truth that you connect with. I wanted to ask you a bit about being a female movie star in the 90s, because I think as a society, we've undergone a kind of critical re-evaluation of how we treated women in the limelight during that era. women in the limelight during that era. So everyone from kind of pop stars to actors to TV presenters, and it was such a specific time and so highly pressurized. And I wonder how you felt, how did you cope with that? Because it was at a time when there wasn't a great deal of body diversity and it felt

like you had to look a certain way in order to be deemed quote-unquote successful how do you think you coped with that sometimes well and sometimes not well at all you are constantly being presented as being in competition with every other actor there's no sorority and you are always uniquely an adjunct to some dude which was annoying but it was kind of like you had to get on with it and there was definitely a way you know that women were passed like purely sexually I mean I think that is still the case that youth and sexiness are a premium in movies but I think that other things are being added into that now. It was pretty undiluted in the 90s. I think the most diverse thing that there was

were that kind of space that actors like Janine Garofalo were in, which was the kind of quirky, cute girl. That was kind of allowed. But other than that, it was just half moon eyebrows and bare midriff and get on with it because there's a bit in your book where you go to hollywood and you've lost the weight that you gained for circle of friends and there are all these agents going around going wow gosh you're not what we expected and wow and we're huge fans and yeah tell us about that period and what that does to your kind of mindset you have to understand I did not grow up being a

beautiful girl in whatever that normalized sense tall slender even features beautiful I don't know whatever that idea of beauty is I was kind of glumping and overgrown and had this huge hair and just couldn't find clothes that fit me. And my sister was this beautiful, tall self. She was this idealized model beauty in that 90s supermodel way. So you have to understand that then when I lost this weight and suddenly I'm in Hollywood and all these people are now saying, God, you're so pretty. And God, this is amazing. You're slim and

you're gorgeous. What are you a size two? I can't believe this. Oh my God. I suddenly was like, fuck. Yeah. Oh my God. I was like, they literally do not see the person that I categorically know that I am. Oh my God. I wonder how long I'm going to be able to ride this for. I tried to write about it in the book to explain it, but it was honestly like a whole different person was presented that I could be. And all of the insecurities and all of the stuff that I felt I had failed at so far in my young life, I could leave behind. And I could be this new person who this new country had conceived of and gave birth to. So it's weird. I definitely left myself behind on a lot of levels.

And I paid for that. I definitely paid for that. That was a bar tab I ran up that did eventually have to get paid. And, you know, I was lucky to, I think, come out the other side of it, not addicted to drugs or having five husbands or tons of plastic surgery. Like, I actually feel like I survived giving up myself that being terrible refinding it and coming out the other end of the tunnel how did you pay that bar tab do you think when you are living in that place of exaltation and every film you do people love and people love you and the phone doesn't stop ringing and you're working all the time there's an association of your success as a human being with that success but it's a trick it's a

sleight of hand it's what hollywood does which is make you believe that that ephemeral thing is solid and real when in actual fact it's a mantle that you really wonderful to put on, but then you very consciously need to take it off and like connect back with who you actually are. And I the work stopped coming as quickly as it had before, you're faced with yourself who's literally been shut in a room for however many years I'd put her away. And you have to deal with that. So it's like the apparent disappearance of that success is what made me had to look at myself. And then oddly, I don't know, the success comes back,

but it's in a different way. And it's maybe more balanced. It's not to do with, I'm only a successful human if people are loving me, and I'm making hundreds or tens of millions of dollars, and this amount of people are going to see my films. I'm going to come on to your failures in a minute, but I honestly could talk to you for several hours. So I need to keep an eye on that because you're just so unbelievably erudite at explaining all of these themes and ideas but when was that reckoning that you had with your real self that you kept locked in a room like what age were you?

Oh god I think I was like 30, 31 and you, that decade before it just been like, it was, it was like being shot out of a cannon. And then I got into this really intense relationship with someone who kept encouraging me to not work and to kind of let the relationships that have defined my life. And I was complicit in that. And so I sort of stopped working and didn't make good choices. And the thread of who I was, was getting further and further away. And then suddenly you're just incredibly isolated in a disastrous relationship and you're not working. So you've removed all of these life rafts in a way. And it was only when I got out of that relationship and the phone had stopped ringing a bit, I kind of got out of Hollywood and I went to Hawaii. I went to, a friend of mine showed up one day. This is the only name that I will drop, but he is properly my friend. Kelly Slater, Kelly Slater, who is arguably the greatest surfer who's ever lived. He just saw me struggling and said, I think you

should get out of Los Angeles and you should go and stay in my friend's guest house in Hawaii. And I was like, I can't go and just live in someone's guest house who I don't know. And he was like, yeah, you can. That's what people do in Hawaii. It's what like, go, go and figure your shit out. So I went and I just stayed there. I took a guitar and I surfed and I played music and I just checked out. And there was some sort of strange reckoning. You know, I was in this place that was utterly foreign to me with people that I didn't know and nobody gave a crap that I was an actor or anything. There were a few self-imposed night of the long knives there. I sort of culled this version of myself. I sort of ran out of money,

pretty much. And I was like, oh God, I have to go and get a job. Okay, what am I going to do? And I came back to LA and I just, I sort of felt emptied out and ready to start again. That's when I found my little place by the sea. And I thought, okay, if I just keep it small and I stay connected to these things that I know I love and that I know bring me back to myself, which is the ocean and surfing and music, I'm going to be okay. It doesn't matter about the other stuff. I don't have to have a lot of money. I don't have to do anything except just wake up every day

and just be a good human. So I did that for a bit. Wow. Yeah, it's good. Final thing before I talk to you about your failures, I'm extremely aware that your mother, who is such an extraordinary force throughout the pages of your book, died while you were writing it. And I just wanted to acknowledge that and pay tribute to her and to ask you how you're doing. acknowledge that and pay tribute to her and to ask you how you're doing oh love you're gonna make me cry you know there are good days and bad days it's astonishing it still feels impossible that I'm not going to see her again here I still feel the presence of her so keenly I got up very early this morning and went surfing and I'd scattered some of her ashes right at the takeoff point on the break that I surf so that whenever I know mum would, she would say, use that as an engine.

Don't let it frighten you. Use it to spur you on every day to do something, whatever that is, that's creative, that's interesting. Don't let the idea of your own mortality frighten you. Let it galvanise you. So I try to stay in that place, but I cry all the time. So that's also part of it I'm so so sorry and I have to say that I feel as though I've met her because of your book and I think that that's

such an extraordinary tribute and just an amazing thing to have done I'm so glad I'm so glad she'd like that that's good I know I saw you say on the Graham Norton show that at least she provided a great ending for the book. She really did. And she would have been so thrilled about that. She really would. She would have been like, oh, my God. Yeah. Use every last bit of the experience to make your own better. She'd be so happy. She really would. And she was a great writer, Mama, as well. She's a really great writer, really great letter writer. She's hilarious. Hilarious. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online.

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Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. hit. So your first failure is that you were the only person to graduate without representation in your class at drama school. So tell us about drama school and what it was like? Did you feel at home there? Well, no, I did. I did not. Again, I had an ebullience and I hadn't learned yet when to just stay silent and listen. Like that came much later. I didn't really know what you were supposed to be doing. Like it felt quite arcane doing fencing and voice lessons, but it was also hilarious and great. But I sort of felt like I was acting at learning to act. And also I'd only known school. I was very young when I went to drama school and there were people who were a bit older, you know, who'd maybe even been to university who

were in my class. And I think I was still very immature and not very together. I mean, that's what I was trying to explain. I always felt like I was trying to catch up with people or I could never quite be in the gang and I was either too much or not quite enough. So it was very fun. And they were really lovely people, lovely, lovely people in my class and the teachers. But I do remember they did largely insist that we needed to come to terms with the fact that we would never work early on and know that unemployment was assured and carry on fencing. Gosh, that's, so it was literally, it was sort of a school of failure. It was like, you are going to fail and we're going to equip you for that.

That's exactly right. It was so bizarre. It was so existential just to be told in no uncertain terms that there is no possibility of success in this profession. And yet we are now going to do the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. And I must have in some sense, I must have been going, well, why the fuck are we doing this then? Like, what's the point? Teach me how to do my taxes then. I mean, it was really weird. But the point? Teach me how to do my taxes then. I mean, it was really weird, but I didn't know what else to do. Like, that's all I knew. Every actor who had gone to my school, who I knew about, who was a professional actor, had gone to drama school,

and then they got an agent, and then maybe they got work, and then they joined the RSC, which was my big plan, And then that was that. So I was just copying what I'd seen before. So when I graduated and I really did not have, you know, you write all these letters inviting all these people, reps and casting directors, agents and casting directors to see you in these plays in the hopes that they will sign you up. Nobody signed me up. And I just had no idea what I was supposed to do after that, bar getting a job to pay my rent, which is what I did. But it was a strange-

Did they give you feedback, these agents? Yes, a little. Sometimes if you were lucky, they would give you feedback. You know, they'd write you a letter saying, we did see you in The Journey of the Fifth Horse, to saying we did see you in the journey of the fifth horse and well done for such a committed performance we're not currently taking on anybody new at this time which is like that's just a complete lie they'll always take on somebody if they're really good or sometimes they'd be like we do have a few other young actresses who are a very similar type to you so it's like oh they've got two tall bumbling dark-haired girls okay they would sort of just kindly say we'll keep your cv on file should anything change but it's a dead end it is just a dead end. And you're aware of it being a dead end. But at like 19 or 20, I was like, what do you do? And it turns out when you don't know what to do, you just have to keep waking up and put one foot in front of the other and go, like my dad said, you've got to just make a list of, I've got to pay my rent, I've got to buy food, I've got to keep food I've got to keep on keeping on and that's as much as I

know and did the fact that you were the only one to graduate without representation did that make the rejection even more crushing because yet again you don't feel part of the gang yeah totally and it was also it felt like it was validation that I was crap it was validation that it was all sort of in my head which is this imposter syndrome that I think I'd always had, which is like, of course it's not you. Of course it's not you. Even though this other part of me was like, I could do this standing on my head all day in the dark. I love it. I know that I'm good. But that is matched with the twin that is saying, no, of course you're shit. Of course you don't have a rep. But meanwhile,

it's funny. It didn't really dim. I still thought I was really good. It's really strange. It's a really strange thing. I think that's such an interesting thing that you've identified there. The fact that I think predominantly with women, although I'm sure it affects men as well, that imposter syndrome can perfectly easily coexist with instinctive confidence. It's like one of us is the real us and the other one is what society over millennia has wanted to suppress in us. And it's these two things constantly jostling for preeminence. Yeah, absolutely. And God knows women simply do have or have traditionally had a harder time of it because they don't have any kind of societal scaffold to hold up their belief that they are good and useful because they are so constantly told that they are not really that useful. Or they're only useful for a very small amount of things that are prescribed by dudes.

Yes, a hundred percent so basically being your own cheerleader whilst also feeling like a piece of shit is a really weird thing it's a really weird thing it's like how can a piece of shit think it is also this great the shit yeah the shit. That's exactly it. But not only that, it's like women could only be useful or attractive for a certain period of time. And you've spoken really eloquently about the liberation of growing older. You're 52 now. Does that internal conflict lessen with age age and is this something that the patriarchy wants to keep away from us they want to keep it secret that that happens what's funny is like I watched my mother do this like my mother was this extraordinarily young person right up until the day that she died like she really was it was not in a kind of creepy I want to be young way she was full of life and the life that she lived.

And I firmly believe that it is only by embracing that life and living it unabashedly as a woman, that any of this is going to change. It's sort of about the insistence that we continue to have a voice because youth and beauty and sexiness, like I said, those are always going to be a voice because youth and beauty and sexiness like I said those are always going to be a premium but the truth is my son asked me yesterday if I'd like to go back to being 18 and I mean I swear to god even with the bouncy tits and the firm bum I wouldn't I swear to god I wouldn't under no circumstances it's such a funny thing that right as women are coming into their power, society says that they're not good for anything because, you know, they can't have children anymore or some either a lack of fecundity correlates to them being useless.

And it's the biggest fucking lie. And we have to keep talking about not how much of a lie it is, but we just need to keep living loudly and fully. And that in itself, I think, is what turns the boat around, even though it's a glacial pace. That is what we have to keep doing. I want to live as my mother did, riding her bike, age 81, 2, 3, 4, right up until the day before. She died in the space of 14 days. She was riding her bicycle up to the hospital when she was getting diagnosed like that's how I'm intending to live fully unapologetically and I think that's how you

create a sea change I really do oh my god I love you so much I mean yes to all of that do you think that that early rejection at drama school taught you something you needed to know yes very very very very very important it's like in the film the matrix she couldn't tell him he was the one because then he wouldn't have like done the work or whatever it was he had to do like he had to go and find out how to be a bullet dodger himself without thinking he was the shit. Do you know what I mean? Like rejection is so powerful if you can use it to galvanize what you believe about yourself without needing the approbation of anybody else. And it sounds like it's really hard and it is counterintuitive, but it turns out anything that has this great secret lesson in life is counterintuitive, but it turns out anything that has this great secret lesson in life

is counterintuitive and looks like it couldn't possibly work. That I do know for sure. You're onto something if it looks like everything is falling apart, because that's when the really good stuff is being forged. And I don't know why that is, but I try now, even though when things are difficult and I can't seem to get a job and I'm worried about how I'm going to pay the mortgage and the school fees and continue to, oh God, whatever the idea of relevancy is, I do try to know that it is an amazingly creative time when you feel like your back is against the wall. But we're not encouraged to think that. We're not encouraged to explore that space. We just get mired by the fear.

But I think that fear is like a clarion call in a way. It's a sound of a bell going, look here, it's hard. Make something. Make something in this space. And invariably, something happens. It might not look like you thought it would, but it happens. Yeah, and I think that another word for fear can sometimes be excitement and if we recategorize that feeling then it becomes as you say a kind of

clarion call for opportunity like sometimes you're fearful of the unknown but where else can you grow into if it's not the unknown but you did become an actress and you did get a form of representation because you met someone at a rave who worked for a casting agent yeah and that led to your first role yeah and your second failure is your failure to fake an orgasm at an audition for a chocolate bar so yeah tell us what happened then minnie my My lovely agent said, there's this commercial and I arrived, there was a room full of girls and we didn't really know what any of it was. And I remember walking into the room and it was full of men. It was full of men with their suit jackets off. It was hot. It was in the summer in some rehearsal room in Soho. And there was this male director and there wasn't another woman in the room. And then there was a stool with like an ashtray full of bits of chocolate. And the director

said, you know, if you've seen the scene in When Harry Met Sally, what we want you to do is like, take a bit of the chocolate and eat the chocolate and have an orgasm. Right, off you go. And all these revolting ad executives sort of lean slightly forward in their chairs. And I knew it was wrong. I knew it was just wrong, but I really wanted the job. Also, I thought I was supposed to do this. This is what you had to do to get a job, which, I mean, it was. So I went and I sat there and I ate the chocolate which was disgusting and like I tried to have an orgasm I tried to fake an orgasm but I was sort of looking out into a sea of dead-eyed dudes on their lunch break in Soho in July and it was all just so revolting I couldn't

even fake an orgasm for a job and I basically got shouted at by the director for not being grateful and then jeered, sort of leered and jeered at by this whole crowd. And it was the strangest feeling because I was devastated that I knew I wasn't going to get this job. Plus, I sort of gave the director a piece of my mind because I finally came to him and was like, I wasn't going to get this job. Plus, I sort of gave the director a piece of my mind because I finally came to him and was like, this is insane that you're all doing this. Also, this chocolate's disgusting. And also, I don't want this fucking job, even though I was broke.

So it was quite a weird turnaround. I remember my heart beating incredibly quickly as I walked back down Brewer Street in Soho, just terrified at what I'd done and knowing I had failed utterly as my agent told me later, you know, and that everyone now was going to say that I was difficult. But something was triggered in me was just this realization that that was always going to be that line that would have to be crossed or not crossed. And that particular failure taught me that you always have a choice you actually really do always have a choice do you think you've stuck true to that over the years because you must subsequently have encountered all sorts of forms of sexual harassment but do you think that that barometer

was set in stone from then on yeah I mean I'd love to say that it was and that everything was then calibrated to that but it's not true because like I said that once you get a taste for success and once you have a taste for fame you can kind of follow it like as my dad used to say like there's a tenor tape to a football and like there's the way that kids oh that's so good it really is it's like you're just following it like no matter where it goes you're not looking to see if it's going in front of cars or near the motorway or in a ditch you're so fixated on that thing and yet the interesting thing about failure in all these different forms is that when it rears up if you're lucky you recognize it and go oh my god I, I remember this. I remember this.

What did I do the last time? Am I supposed to be humbled in this moment? Is that what I need? Do I need to be humbled in order to see, actually to come back to myself and see the way forward or just to come back to a neutral space or maybe clear out some of the stuff I've been accruing. And so I didn't always manage to say no, but I said no enough to get me not hired on a lot of other jobs too. And what was the Me Too movement like for you personally? God, it was so satisfying. It was so amazing. It was just so amazing to finally feel all these women, like a lot of whose stories I had already knew, because you talk in the business, everybody knew, everybody knew who not to be left alone in a room with. Everybody knew. To hear those publicly,

to see them not being shouted down, to see these women going, oh my goodness, we can stand together. And if we stand together, then our voices are stronger. It was so satisfying. And then I've got to say the other part of that was the kind of astonishment that women that I knew were being super disingenuous about their involvement. Women who had been completely complicit and wanted to get ahead by doing certain things who were then suddenly standing up saying, yes, yes, it was awful. It was awful. I realized just in a way that was another expression of the abuse of everybody was that wanting to co-op the idea of being a victim later on, having been completely fine with doing certain things is

also being a victim of those things. So it was really complex. It was kind of amazing. I didn't feel like it was a witch hunt. I thought it was hilarious, the amount of men who were like, you know, we're being falsely accused. And it's like, yeah, tell that to all the other witches. Yeah. Pendulum swinging, mate. Yeah, exactly. Pendulum swinging. Suck it up. And it did. It did swing back to a place that is, I hope it's a bit more progressive, but it's certainly not only in favor of women now. You worked with Harvey Weinstein, of course, on Good Will Hunting. Yeah. What was that like?

he didn't think that I was, in his words, fuckable. But it was undeniable. I really don't say that ever. I don't particularly think that I've been undeniable in other things, particularly. But in that audition and in Good Will Hunting, I was undeniably really good. And all those other people knew that. The producer that wasn't Harvey, the actual producer of the film, this guy, Chris Moore and Matt and Ben and Gus, they knew I was good. So they advocated for me from that place. And I guess he didn't want to fight that fight, but I never liked him because he was a revolting marginalizer of women. He fit them into such a narrow bin. It was just revolting. That was revolting. I saw enough girls on his laps to be grateful that that wasn't me, but I definitely not suffered, but had an experience that, you know, at his hands

that made me feel like I'd felt a million times before, you know, that I was a piece of shit and not worth it. And of course I wasn't going to get the part, but then on the other side, I am going to get this no matter that this big fat producer doesn't want me to do it. I'm going to do it anyway. And I did. And leaving Weinstein aside, what was it like filming Good Will Hunting? Because when I watched that movie, it feels so special because it feels like there's this kind of innocence to it, both in the themes, but also almost in the making of it. And I wonder if it felt like that to make it. Yeah, it did. It totally did. The setup is this, that Quentin Tarantino was making Jackie Brown at the same time that we were shooting Good Will Hunting,

and Quentin Tarantino, that was where it was at. That was the whole Miramax obsession and focus was on that movie. We were pretty much left to our own devices. We shot in Toronto and a little bit in Massachusetts. Matt and Ben and Casey, and they all lived in this big old house and like everyone was together and it was just lovely. Gus Van Sant, probably my favorite director I ever worked with. You know, he's not a man of many words, but the words that he says are so poignant and brilliant. You know, he's not deliberately enigmatic. He just is. He's just a quiet observer.

The most amazing cinematographer, most amazing crew, like just the whole thing. But it was very quiet and brilliant and secret. And nobody had any idea that they were making this classic film. Not at all. Everyone was just having a great time, being in love, like playing, having fun like creating shots out of nothing choosing to shoot things differently like it was just a really

really wonderful experience you've had your ups and downs with matt damon your co-star you were in a relationship with him he acted like a cad on the oprah winfrey show when he split up with you and you didn't know you'd been split up with. And he's also someone that said something about Me Too, which you referred to earlier, which kind of described it as a witch hunt, which you took him to task on quite rightly. Are you friends? Well, I wouldn't say we're friends. Like we don't see each other and hang out, but I've seen him around in the last few years and like, it's actually been really nice, you know, sort of had a couple of nice chats, like pre-COVID, I'd see him on in the last few years and it's actually been really nice. I've had a couple of nice chats pre-COVID.

I'd see him on the beach near where I live. We're not friends, but I feel an enormous amount of love for him because we shared this inflection point. Well, it was an inflection point for me. I think it's okay to call people out if you're willing to stand by what you believe. I don't think you should call people out just to get attention and I also think that you can move on from that and grow and learn and I think of him in a very friendly way now particularly having written this book like I feel like I wrote about our relationship such as it was with love and humor you know and it quite

the sort of hilariously dramatic ending which from right right now it does seem, it's just like a really good story, you know, but it's hard to, I guess he was very young and I was pretty young. So yeah, I'm always happy to see him. You do have a number of high profile exes and on a different podcast, you talked about how you were driving down Sunset Boulevard with your sister kate and you saw a billboard and there were three male leads you were like oh fucked them all i just want to salute you for that well i was single like i've been single like i never got married life is for living yes i never got married like this whole idea well that's your third failure I know my third failure is I never got married which left me free to date loads of people like not in a particularly promiscuous way but rather like I was never in relationships that went on for years and years like I've had a few

in my life that did that which is why it was absolutely hilarious driving down and seeing that billboard and being like oh yeah you shagged all of them and had a by the way had a great time it was wonderful that whole notion of the sort of the whoredom notion this idea of women having sex that is enjoyable and wonderful and fun and you know great wonderful part of life. Like that somehow being seedy or hoary or a bad thing. I don't know who that's constructed by, but that isn't by the women who are busy having a good time, having sex with interesting people. I know that for fucking sure. So I don't know. I did think I was supposed to get married though, which was ironic given that my mother was not married to my father and my grandfather was not married to my grandmother initially on my father's side.

Like, yeah, there's a hereditary being married to other people thing. And yet I set my course for this traditional idea of you got to be married and then you have children and then you are loved and then everything is okay. And I don't even know how old I was when I conceived of that idea, but I stuck to it and was constantly disappointed that I was never chosen. That's how I saw marriage was being chosen, being special, being really, really the best person to be loved meant having someone ask you to marry them it's so funny it took me a long time to finally end up with someone who has no interest in being married but who loves me better than and more fully than I've ever been loved and we have the most hilarious

wonderful relationship on all these different levels and I think of course of course, that is how it would be. Of course, I would wind up with a person who, in his own words, the reason he doesn't want to get married is because why would I want to be in a thruple with the state of California, is what he said, which I think is brilliant. I was like, okay, well, he's like, I don't want to institutionalize love. And I was like, all right, all right, all right. Nobody's asking you to do that. But I would like a party in a ring at some point. I don't need to be formally married, but I'd like a celebration of the ritual. I like that. Well, you do talk about that in the book, about the idea that marriage is for people who want to intentionally curate an event that they actually meant to have because so much of life is random chaotic but I

do think it's super interesting that you clearly have this free spirit side which goes surfing in Hawaii and needs to be close to the ocean and doesn't play by the rules and that coexists with a side of I want to be chosen and I want to feel safe and it's fascinating and again like I massively relate to it for whatever reason. Do you think it all comes back to our daddy issues? Do you think it's just a father thing? Yeah, probably. And also everybody's got their something.

You got to have your schism. You just got to get to know what it is. Like get to know it, like see it. Everybody has a hole. We are all imperfect. So the best thing you can do is identify, oh yeah, I have these two very contradictory things that go on in me and I often operate from that place. The only thing I can really do is become familiar with them and know when I'm acting out in a way

that is maybe not helpful because of my shit. I don't think you can change it. I think all of this idea of getting fixed or changing it, it's really about knowing it. Knowing it seems to do the fixing I've found or makes it easier to navigate. I want to talk about your relationship now. And I also want to talk about the other great love of your life, which is your son, Henry. But before getting onto that, this failure to get married, you were once engaged. So did you decide not to get married at that point? Yeah. I mean, obviously.

Yeah, that was sort of a stupid question. No, it's not a stupid question at all. I did have a sudden reckoning with this is a very bad idea. And weirdly, because everybody else in hollywood is like well you're so far down the road now just get married and if it doesn't work out you'll get a divorce like more than being married i did not want to be divorced i don't know why i just maybe because it just always felt like this unicorn occurrence this marriage it was it needed to at least start off in a really good strong place and that relationship was not in a good strong place so I bailed quite rightfully I think

quite rightly let's talk about Henry your son who you had out of wedlock because you weren't married because you'd failed to get married yeah yeah but it just sounds so beautiful the relationship that you have with him and yeah I suppose I just want to ask you about him what's he like oh he's amazing he's the best person I know like he really is just the most lovely hilarious person and he sort of came in like that like he was a very easy baby almost like he knew it was just going to be me and him so he wasn't going to give me any trouble he is an inadvertent teacher in that Henry wakes up every day and he meets the day with sunshine which is why I think he likes England so much where there is no sunshine because I think he doesn't realize that he's the

sunshine so he doesn't mind the cold and the sunshine. So he doesn't mind the cold and the rain. He loves all the books and the talking and the idea of going on long, wet walks with dogs. He observes life and he sees it from a lot of different angles. And he's very, very funny. I'm constantly deferring to him, which is so inappropriate because I'm his mother. Yeah, he's very wise. I'm very grateful that he's my son.

Was it hard being a single mother? Yeah, bits of it were. And bits of it I realized was so much easier because I didn't have to fucking cross-check everything with another person going, is it okay if I changed a goat milk formula? It's like, fuck it, I'm going to do what I want. The pressure of having to be financially independent. I had no one except myself providing income, which was this huge thing. independent. I had no one except myself providing income, which was this huge thing. But when I found this amazing nanny, who was basically Henry's nanny till about five minutes ago, she helped me live our life. She was sort of part of this strange little tiny bandwagon. It was hard, and it was also incredibly easy and rewarding because I'm a bit of a lone wolf. I love being among people, but it's never really been my way as being in a huge gang of friends.

I have these little pockets. This little unit of me and Henry was always quite easy. Everybody absorbed him. Everybody loved us and would take us in all these different places, all these different people. And he's 13. Yeah. Yeah, he's 13. God, it's great to be a beam of sunshine when you're a

teenager well done Henry I can't I can't believe I mean honestly it's really funny like maybe that's gonna happen maybe he's gonna hit that I can't bear it but I understand if he does like he's owed it he's been so nice for so long if he becomes awful for a bit like he's totally got that in escrow I guess now you recount in managing expectations how you got together with your partner Addison and it is one of the favorite stories I've ever read in any memoir please will you tell us the story of how it happened well the relationship that I thought, you know, I finally, when I was about 44, fell in love with an old friend, someone I'd known since I was 17, this person who really was one of my best friends. And I loved him with all of my heart. One evening I was lying in bed and I received a ton of texts from a woman who my partner had been in a relationship with for the past two years that I

didn't know about. And our whole life just came crashing down. And right around that time, California was experiencing these terrible, terrible wildfires. And the whole of Malibu, which is the little seaside town where I live, was on fire. And my relationship had burned to the ground. My house was now about to burn to the ground and all my friends' houses were burning to the ground. There was this sort of conflagration. And in the insanity of that, all I wanted to do was to get home, was to get back to my house, which was actually saved by a group of people in my community who refused to evacuate. And they stayed and fought the fire and basically saved the hundred or so houses in this little pocket that we live in. And they were

running out of gasoline for their generators. They didn't have fresh fruit or chocolate, cigarettes, booze. There was nothing. They needed stuff. So I had this idea in my mania to get a boat and to come and deliver stuff like some crazy delivering angel. And even though I'd been assured that I would be arrested, you know, by the Coast Guard, everybody were like, there is no ship to shore. You cannot get in there that people have been looting. Even with proof of residence, you will be arrested. So I was like, okay, well, I have to do this because I'm not sleeping and I'm not really eating. And I, this, okay, well, I have to do this because I'm not sleeping and I'm not really eating. And I, this is a good idea. I have to do this. Who could I call? So I remember this guy that I'd met while I'd been in my previous relationship. I thought he was really

cool. He was kind of this Indiana Jones type dude who made documentaries in places of conflict around the world. And he was super educated and not patronizing but very articulate and bright and I was like I'm going to call him so I called him up and he was obviously in some really dodgy place when I called him in some really dodgy situation but he very cheerfully said well I'm back on Saturday and I was like well will you come and help me with this thing and he was like okay so he shows up in the mar I mean, I've met him one other time and he showed up with like a satellite phone and a bombproof case and like a bag of peanuts. He was just so unruffled by the whole insanity of my plan and of me and this kid whose boat we had. And he literally jumped in the ocean and helped me paddle all this stuff

into the beach where I lived he cheerfully got chased by the coast guard while they were yelling at us that we were going to be arrested once they got us he then sat in my house with me all day long in wet swimsuits answering questions about why men are unfaithful and just generally revealed himself to be this excellent person. And, you know, I was in no condition to be in a relationship with anyone like ever again, really. And he had no interest in, you know, he wanted to travel and just go and do dangerous things in his life. And nonetheless, we really reluctantly fell in love eventually. It started right there. And we were never really apart after that but we were

friends for a while oh it's so romantic and he's also really hot because I've seen the photos so he is hot he is he's totally hot he's gorgeous I am so lucky oh he's very lucky as well but can I ask because I met my second husband age 39 yeah and I do think that there is something very special about love experienced when you are past the first flush of youth because you've been around the block a bit you've been bruised you've been heartbroken you've learned from that and to be honest like my abiding feeling now, I'm just so grateful. I'm so grateful. I wonder if you feel that because you've got to this age, that it's the right time to have met this person. Yeah, I couldn't have done it a moment sooner. Like as it turns out, like when I

look back, it's like, I couldn't have been in a relationship and done all of the things that I actually needed to do in my particular life. That's why this idea of a prescribed itinerary of like you grow up, you get married, you have kids, it's all bollocks. It's your life. It's looking at your life. And I, I know I kept following threads that actually were not meant for me. And that's okay because I sort of finally came to peace with that. And then things show up and not necessarily on your timeline. Everybody can find somebody who would marry them if that is the idea. You can do that.

But I don't think that's the end game. I'm only realizing that the end game is being able to sort of show up warts and all, all the beautiful and all of the ugly, and be able to talk about that and have somebody roar with laughter at stuff that other people found gratingly awful about you. It's so refreshing how much he laughs at me and all my nonsense. It's really sweet. And he also needs love and emotion, like he is a bit of a robot. And it's wonderful to be able to provide that for him and for it actually to be welcomed.

Yes. You know? Yes. I have exactly the same thing that historically, I cry so easily. And historically, that has probably been quite annoying for some people. Whereas now in the relationship I'm in,

it's actively valued. It's like, oh, I love that. So nice. Yes, so nice. So yeah, it's actively valued. It's like, oh, I love that. So nice. Yes. Isn't it lovely? So yeah, that's the proper alchemy. It's not that the thing itself changes. It's that you find the things in life to accommodate who you are. Yes. I love that. Minnie, this has been such a pleasure. I've got one last question for you, because so much of this conversation has been about navigating our ideas of what success really means.

What does success mean to you now? It really means waking up and being in the day in a place of gratitude and exploration. That is it. To be able to be creative every day, to hope that someone will pay you for that in order to maintain your life, that is success. Smiling, laughing, and being creative. That's it. That's really it for me. Gratitude and exploration. What an amazing note to end it on. Minnie Driver, I'm so grateful for your voice and I'm so, so grateful that you came on How to Fail.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. I really appreciate it. I think you're wonderful. If you enjoyed this episode of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, I would so appreciate it if you could rate, review and subscribe. Apparently it helps other people know that we exist.