Minnie Driver explains why her break-up with Good Will Hunting co-star Matt Damon was ‘agony’

Minnie Driver has opened up about the “agony” of her public break-up from Matt Damon.

The actors started a relationship while starring together in Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film Good Will Hunting, which became a sleeper hit and kickstarted Damon’s career in a huge way.

Damon’s sudden celebrity status put pressure on their relationship and their breakup attracted widespread attention from the media – not least because Damon announced he was single on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was news to Driver.

Reflecting on the public nature of their breakup, which the actor saw mentioned on the front pages of taloids everytime she entered a shop, Driver told Entertainment Tonight: “I don’t care who you are, that is agony and it’s like a strange, surreal dream. 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,” she continued.

Driver, who has released a book of personal essays titled Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays, said that her family warned her against continuing a relationship with him after Good Will Hunting became an unexpected hit.

“My family loved Matt – it wasn’t that,” she said. “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.

“They were like, ‘This may well end badly for reasons that are to do with all these things coming together in a perfect storm.’ And also, like, you shouldn’t date someone you work with.”

Damon also co-wrote Good Will Hunting alongside Ben Affleck, and the pair won Best Original Screenplay at the 1998 Oscars.