Minnie Driver says Matt Damon breaking up with her in the public eye was 'agony'
- Minnie Driver has spoken about the "agony" she felt after Matt Damon publicly broke up with her.
- Driver and Damon met while filming "Good Will Hunting" in 1997.
Minnie Driver has spoken about her 1998 breakup from Matt Damon and why it was "agony" to experience it in the public eye.
Driver met Damon on the set of the 1997 movie, "Good Will Hunting," and the couple dated for a short period before Damon announced he was single on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 1998.
Promoting the release of her memoir, "Managing Expectations," Driver spoke to Entertainment Tonight's Rachel Smith about the breakup occurring just as the pair shot to fame in Hollywood.
"I don't care who you are, that is agony and it's like a strange, surreal dream," Driver said of tabloid magazine coverage of the breakup. "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."
Driver also said that the short-lived relationship caused her family some concern.
"My family loved Matt — it wasn't that," said the actress. "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,'" she continued. "And also, like, you shouldn't date someone you work with."
After the breakup, the "Grosse Pointe Blank" star said she was sat on a step outside her home in London when her father offered her some sage advice about the split.
"He was like, 'Listen. You're not going to want to hear this, but the best thing I can tell you is, you're definitely going to feel this way about somebody else,'" she said. "And I was like, 'That is a terrible thing to say! I don't feel better. It's awful!'"
"He was so right!" she added.