Minnie Driver’s happily ever after looks a little different than she envisioned.
During a July 2024 interview with The Sunday Times, Driver recalled “longing to be married” for years to make up for the impact her parents’ split had on her. The actress found out when she was 12 that her parents broke up because her father was married to another woman and had a secret second family.
“If I look at my history, what it did was make me want to be married so much, and then choose men who were so not the right men to be married to,” Driver told the outlet.
Despite her previous dreams of matrimony, Driver has no plans to marry boyfriend Addison O’Dea, whom she began dating in 2018.
“Now I’m with someone who doesn’t want to get married, but who is the most devoted, loving, extraordinary [person],” she said. “Everything I could have wanted in my childhood idea of a husband, he actually is.”
Keep scrolling for a look at Driver’s dating history over the years:
John Cusack
Driver briefly dated Cusack after meeting him on the set of their 1997 film Grosse Pointe Blank.
Matt Damon
Driver fell for another costar while filming the 1997 drama Good Will Hunting. She and Damon, who starred in and cowrote the film, dated from 1997 to 1998. Weeks after Damon publicly proclaimed that he was “single” on a talk show in 1998, the exes reunited at the 70th Academy Awards, where Damon and Ben Affleck won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Driver looked forlorn as Damon and Affleck gave their acceptance speech.
“Oh, my God, my little face!” Driver said during a March 2024 appearance on The Jennifer Hudson Show after being shown a picture of herself during the Oscars moment. “I want to wrap my arms around that young woman and hug her and go, ‘It’s all going to be fine. Like, honey, don’t worry.’”
Driver continued, “He had a new girlfriend [and] I was totally heartbroken, but anyone who’s been heartbroken can understand the last thing you want is everybody having a window in on that.”
The former couple got a chance to make small talk when they ran into each other in 2020.
“I did see Matt Damon on the beach and I had not had a conversation with him, seriously, since we made the film. That was last summer, and it was actually very nice to see him and his kids and his wife, [Luciana Barroso], and it all felt quite middle-aged actually, which was reassuring,” Driver said during a September 2021 appearance on the “Keep It” podcast. “That was nice to just have sort of a middle-aged conversation about the weather and stuff.”
Josh Brolin
Driver was briefly engaged to Brolin in 2001, and she has no regrets about calling off their wedding.
“The one time I was engaged, it would have been, I think, the biggest mistake of my life,” she told The Times in July 2024.
Timothy J. Lea
Driver initially kept Lea’s identity a secret when she gave birth to their son, Henry, in 2008. The twosome’s relationship was brief.
“We weren’t together and he wasn’t directly in the business, so I chose to protect him and not have a rain of publicity,” Driver told The Guardian in 2012 of keeping Lea’s identity private for years. She added that Lea was “sort of” a good dad to Henry.
“He’s figuring it out,” she said at the time. “I mean, he hasn’t been that involved — his choice. But he is now.”
Matthew Felker
Driver was seen holding hands with the actor while shopping at the Los Angeles mall The Grove in November 2011.
Ryan Kavanaugh
The Oscar nominee attended the 2014 Golden Globes with Kavanaugh. She and the film financier posed together on the red carpet and were spotted holding hands at an afterparty.
Neville Wakefield
Driver reconnected with Wakefield after she ran into him while on a blind date with someone else.
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“We were sitting there and I saw somebody walk by and I recognized him from the back of his head, and it was this guy that I’ve known since I was 17-years-old and I called out his name, and it was him, and we went out together,” she said during a September 2016 appearance on The Talk, noting that she and Wakefield previously hadn’t seen each other in about 10 years. “We went out for dinner and that was that.”
It’s unclear when Driver and Wakefield stopped dating.
Addison O’Dea
Driver has been dating the filmmaker and writer since 2018. She celebrated their anniversary via Instagram in November 2023.
“Five years filled with laughter, grief, creativity and becoming our little tribe of 4 (counting [our dog] Bob),” she wrote alongside photos of the pair. “Here we are on our first formal date, which was a v. glam affair, and you made me laugh so much I split a seam in this beautiful dress. Slide 2 is how we really are: happy, eating, by the sea. Love you.”
