The ObserverMinnie DriverInterviewMinnie Driver: 'Oh, I'm being so naughty …'
Megan ConnerThere are few actors more honest. She was in the same league as Kate Winslet and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but fell from grace. Here, she talks about Hollywood life – the gossip, the indignities – and how, at 42, she just doesn't give a damnIn a hotel room in West Hollywood, Minnie Driver is looking at our photographer in disbelief. "You're not being serious," she says, hitching up a silk trouser leg and smacking a spangly high-heeled foot on to the table. The camera clicks a yes. "Honestly?" Click. "I can't believe you've got me doing this." But she throws her head back anyway, lets out a deep, throaty laugh and attempts a between-the- legs shot with a pool cue.
Ten minutes later she's shimmying over to the dressing room to change into jeans, a smock top and biker boots and then she leads me out the door and down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, emblazoned with hundreds of pink terrazzo stars bearing A-listers' names. Not Driver's, though, because her star doesn't exist.
It's hard to explain why, after being feted as Hollywood's hottest young thing at the beginning of her career, the golden girl mentioned ahead of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Kate Winslet never went stratospheric. At 42 she's still a fine actor working steadily in film and television but she has never quite graduated to the leading-lady status that she seemed set to attain.
Her latest film, Hunky Dory, a small British indie from Jon Finn, the producer of Billy Elliot, is a sweet if slightly odd high-school musical set in Wales during the heatwave of 1976. Her performance is brilliant, as is her Swansea accent, but the humour is quite specialised (and Welsh). "I just read the script and I could see the movie," she explains as we sit on a couch in a laid-back bar near the end of the boulevard. And was she tempted by the fact that she got to sing? "Well, yes, actually, that was totally it." She laughs. "There was this amazing scene where I sang in a working men's club, but… well… they bloody cut it." She pauses to take a sip of white wine. "I was gutted! But the whole storyline was just too sad for this little upbeat movie."
Does she love the film? "I'm so proud of it, yes. But I wish we had more money." Now she's fired up. "I just wish we had more fucking money! But it was never meant to be a Glee. We all sang live, nothing was dubbed, and it was meant to be raw and scrappy. I just don't feel I've totally ticked off the singing movie."
Would she like to do Glee? "Oh, I've been trying to get on that show since, well... God knows. I know, I'm not scared to say it! Gwyneth Paltrow completely stole my thunder!" She roars with laughter. "Oh shit, that's the bloody headline, isn't it? But no, seriously, I wish it had been me."
She hasn't made a Hollywood blockbuster since Hard Rain – the 1998 disaster thriller that seemed to kick off a barrage of negative press. It wasn't just a bad film; it marked the beginning of a fall from grace. There were rumours of Driver being a diva on set. While she had been nominated for an Oscar for her supporting role in Good Will Hunting and started dating Matt Damon, her co-star, he dumped her live on Oprah by announcing to the world that their relationship was over. It was a hideous episode, but Driver gained little of the same public sympathy that Jennifer Aniston, say, receives over romantic tribulations.
Her reputation took a further battering when, in 2002, comments she made about Dame Judi Dench in an interview were taken out of context (she complimented Dench on her ability to transform into different characters, one of which was "small, round and middle-aged", but the tabloid press considered it a jibe and branded her "venemous"). She vowed never to talk to a newspaper again.
And yet here we are, discussing the period that she describes as "awful" and "extremely difficult". Was the press portrayal of her completely off the mark? "I did have a fight with the producer on that film [Hard Rain]. I think that's where a lot of it came from. But we were shooting 16-hour days in a tank of millions of gallons of freezing-cold water. It was utterly miserable." She admits the situation had an impact on her career but insists she doesn't feel bitter. "God no. I would be an impoverished soul. It's part of the job, isn't it? Par for the course."
Physically, Minnie Driver is very similar to the woman she was back then; her trademark black curls and angular jaw tell you so. Her accent is unwaveringly British. But she says she is much changed. "My 20s were a completely and utterly different time in my life," she explains. "They were just too myopic. All I did was make films and see whichever boyfriend I was dating at the time." In her 30s, she had a "crisis" and started making music in a beach trailer in Santa Monica. "It was my way of dealing with everything. I'd just broken up with someone [she called off her engagement to Josh Brolin amid rumours his stepmother Barbra Streisand was taking over the planning of their wedding] and needed to start expanding my life beyond work."
She has lived in LA for the past 14 years, and also has a more permanent house in the hills. But the trailer fitted a certain view of her: "People seem to like this image of me being all boho and hippy. It's either that or I'm down on my luck, I've got no money, the work's dried up."
Her personal life has been the focus of intense press scrutiny. In 2008 she revealed on Jay Leno that she was going to be a mother – her son, Henry Story Driver, is now three – but she wasn't going to identify the father. "We weren't together and he wasn't directly in the business," she says now, "so I chose to protect him and not have a rain of publicity." This didn't quite go to plan; the subject has barely been left alone since. "I know, but it's ridiculous. He's not famous. There's no big story."
Later she will say that he was an episode writer on The Riches, the US TV series she starred in with Eddie Izzard until it was culled during the writers' strike after two seasons. Did she really want to reveal that? She shrugs. "I don't need to protect him any more. He can fend for himself. He's a grown-up." Is he a good dad? "Sort of. He's figuring it out... I mean, he hasn't been that involved; his choice. But he is now."
As one of two children born out of an affair (her father, Ron Driver, a self-made millionaire, already had a wife and daughter who knew nothing of his other family), you wonder how at ease she is with being a single parent. "I had good friends around me, so it was sort of hilarious," she remembers of her pregnancy. "I was making a film at the time and the paparazzi would shout: 'Who's the sperm donor?' at me. Oh, it was an awful film," she cringes [Motherhood], "and I wouldn't do that again, but I was heavily pregnant and I just wanted to take my mind off it."
Of her own unconventional upbringing, she says: "As a child, you just know what you know. And I grew up in this very immediate, amazing way. There wasn't much attachment to the past; my father lived his life and he didn't look much beyond that evening. But I think that's a good thing. I think I'm like him in a way."
She is in two minds about whether to stay in America in the long-term. "I've never felt completely at home," she admits, "but I get the culture, I really do." She adores the fact that she can have an outdoors life camping, hiking and surfing. "But it is hard to exist in Hollywood." As an actor? "Yeah. Everywhere you go, you see an advert for a new film or TV show that you didn't get and you're reminded that it's pilot season and you've got to get on it. It's either that or ex-boyfriends. There was one time I realised I'd shagged a whole billboard! My sister pointed it out when we were driving past and we laughed so hard. But oh, that's so… I'm being so naughty."
Next on her career wish list, she would like to return to the small screen, something which surprises me. "I still want an Oscar, and to work with Danny Boyle and Martin Scorsese – of course I want all of that. But what I really, really want to do is another US TV series. I do. I want that life. I want a regular pay cheque. And I want to be able to know when I can pick up Henry from school."
Motherhood has changed her perspective. "It's not about me, which it was in my 20s. This is a very selfish business – and when you have a baby, that ceases to be the case. I actually think I've started to enjoy my job more because I take it less seriously."
She describes herself as "robust person". Does she mean thick-skinned? "Not to the point where nothing affects you," she admits. "But you just let it affect you for an afternoon, then we're done. Otherwise you're going to start drinking heavily or taking drugs and ending up in rehab." You get the impression that she feels a sense of achievement that she hasn't done that. "I do. I really do. I'm proud of my life. I can handle myself. I'm not a nutcase. I know that."
Hunky Dory is out in cinemas on 2 March
This article was amended on 21 February 2012 to clarify a reference to Dame Judi Dench.
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