Driver, Minnie (1971- )

English film actor popular during the late 1990s. She made her film debut in the screen adaptation of Irish writer Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends in 1995, playing an Irish student, but avoided being typecast in British ‘girl next door’ roles. She later appeared as a lounge singer in the James Bond film Goldeneye (1995) and as a street-smart New Yorker in Sleepers (1996). Her big career break was in Good Will Hunting (1997), for which she received an Academy Award nomination.

Her other films include Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Hard Rain (1998), The Governess (1998), An Ideal Husband (1999), Slow Burn (1999), Return to Me (2000), Beautiful (2000), Ella Enchanted (2004), and The Phantom of the Opera (2004).

Driver was born in London, England, and lived in Barbados until she was seven, when she left for boarding school in Hampshire. After receiving a drama degree from the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in 1991, she began her career in television, appearing in such British dramas as God on the Rocks (1991), Mr Wroe's Virgins (1993), and The Politician's Wife (1995). In 1998 Driver and her sister Kate formed the production company Two Drivers, which released At Satchem Farm (1998).