Minnie Driver Reveals Why She Looked So Sad When Matt Damon Won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting

It all started when movie fan account, movieshmood, shared an old clip of a young Affleck and Damon accepting the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for the 1997 film. The two were beyond excited, rattling off hurried thank yous as they tried to mention everyone they could in their time on stage.

After thanking Gus Van Sant for his direction and Robin Williams for his role in the film, Affleck gave a shoutout to a "brilliant" Driver, who was also nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category.

But Driver looked less than happy. In fact, she seemed quite sad when the camera settled on her for several seconds before panning to the other other mentions on Affleck and Damon's long list.

Driver is all too aware of the face she was making in that moment, commenting on the Oct. 12 post, "My face 😂😂😂😂❤️."

Driver then revealed what was making her sad that night, a night when many thought she would be celebrating -- it was actually just good old fashioned heartbreak.

The explanation came when a fan wrote, "Minnie looks so sad," to which the Grosse Pointe Blank actress responded, sharing that she was dealing with a breakup between her and Damon, who she started dating while making the award-winning film.

Driver said Damon had ended things between them just weeks before the show, opting to bring "his new girlfriend" for the big occasion.

"Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this, and was at the Oscars with his new gf… I was devastated," Driver wrote. "Wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film ! ♥️"

While the Instagram interaction took place weeks ago, it was re-shared on the social media platform Tuesday by the popular account Comments By Celebs.

Damon and Driver met while filming the Oscar-winning movie and dated from 1997 to 1998, ending things just weeks before the Academy Awards, as Driver mentioned in her comment.

Following their public breakup, Damon went on to date Beetlejuice star Winona Ryder. The couple initially met in December 1997 while he was still with Driver and they dated from 1998 to 2000. There are no shots of Damon and Ryder from the night, with Damon seemingly bringing his mom as his date instead.

This is not the first time Driver has reflected on her short-lived relationship with Damon, previously detailing their breakup in her book, Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essay.

Calling their love affair "sweet," Driver told Entertainment Tonight while promoting the book in 2022 that things fell apart once the pair hit the award show circuit.

"My family loved Matt -- it wasn't that. 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," Driver explained.

She continued, "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.

Driver also reflected on the way their breakup played out in the tabloids, adding that it was absolute "agony" to live through that moment.

"I don't care who you are, that is agony and it's like a strange, surreal dream," she said. "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 would go on to settle down with filmmaker Addison O'Dea in 2018, while Damon, for his part, married Luciana Barroso. The pair has welcomed three daughters together, in addition to Barroso's oldest daughter from a previous marriage.