Minnie Driver has candidly shared that marrying her former flame Josh Brolin would have been “the biggest mistake of her life.” The star of “Good Will Hunting,” now 54, encountered the 56-year-old Marvel actor on the set of their 2000 film “Slow Burn.” The two actors quickly developed a romantic connection, and within a year, Brolin popped the question.
Though Driver initially accepted the proposal, the engagement was short-lived, ending just six months later. In October 2001, a representative for Driver announced, “Minnie Driver and Josh Brolin have decided to cancel their wedding plans. Their decision is mutual and amicable.”
In her 2022 memoir “Managing Expectations,” Driver revealed a family secret that profoundly affected her relationships. She learned at age 12 that her parents were never legally married because her father was already married to another woman. Reflecting on this in a recent interview with The Sunday Times, Driver explained how this revelation shaped her approach to relationships. “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,” she shared.
Discussing her past relationship with Brolin, Driver confessed, “The one time I was engaged it would have been, I think, the biggest mistake of my life.” Brolin, famed for his role as Thanos in the MCU, later married actor Diane Lane and subsequently model Kathryn Boyd.
Today, Driver has found happiness with writer and director Addison O’Dea, whom she has been dating since 2019. She expressed contentment with her current relationship, stating, “But now I’m with someone who doesn’t want to get married but who is the most devoted, loving, extraordinary … everything I could have wanted in my childhood idea of a husband, he actually is.”
Before her engagement to Brolin, Driver also dated Matt Damon, who won an Oscar in 1998 shortly after their breakup. Reflecting on her past, Driver mused in a recent interview on the Jennifer Hudson Show about the advice she would give her younger self. “I wish I could’ve told her, ‘Honey, it’s cool, like, you can celebrate, and life’s gonna be great and beautiful and hard and amazing, and you’re gonna love again. It’ll be call,’” she said.
Amidst the revelations and reflections, Driver’s journey through love and life remains a profound testament to finding personal happiness and fulfillment beyond the conventional paths of relationships and marriage.