Minnie Driver says her first Oscars was marred by the fact she was fired by Matt Damon shortly before the awards ceremony.
Driver spoke about the evening while commenting on an Instagram video of Damon and Ben Affleck accepting the original screenplay award for 1998's “Good Will Hunting.”
While Damon and Affleck could hardly contain their joy during their speech, Driver appeared sullen as the camera cut to them.
The “Grosse Pointe Blank” star looked back on things with a laugh as a response was captured on the Instagram account “Comments by Celebs.”
“My face,” she wrote, along with a series of crying emojis and a red heart.
Minnie Driver shared the backstory behind her grumpy look at the 1998 Oscars in an Instagram comment.
Minnie Driver shared the backstory behind her grumpy look at the 1998 Oscars in an Instagram comment.
In a response to a fan, Driver explained why she looked “so sad”: “Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks earlier and was at the Oscars with his new girlfriend… I was devastated.”
“I wish I could have celebrated more because it was a great moment for all of us and for this wonderful film!”
The exes met on the set of Good Will Hunting in 1997 and began dating.
Driver was reportedly surprised when Damon announced he was single during an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in January 1998.
Actress Minnie Driver appears at the Academy Awards on March 23, 1998.
Actress Minnie Driver appears at the Academy Awards on March 23, 1998.
“I dated Minnie for a while, but we're not really romantically linked anymore. We're just really good friends,” he told Oprah, adding that the match just “wasn't meant to be like this.”
Damon claimed he and Driver had broken up before his announcement, but a few months later she called his revelation “fantastically inappropriate” in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Driver looked back on the relationship with mixed feelings in an interview with Entertainment Tonight last year, saying, “It was just a sweet romance that had a sweet love affair at the center of it all, but it had an explosive ending and then it became the focus.”