It’s been nearly 26 years since Matt Damon and Ben Affleck picked up their Oscars for Good Will Hunting, and their frantic speech still remains one of the most entertaining of all time.
Taking to the stage to collect the award for Best Original Screenplay, Ben and Matt — then aged 25 and 27 — struggled to play it cool as they expressed their thanks.
“I just said to Matt, losing would suck and winning would be really scary — and it is really, really scary,” Ben told the crowd of A-listers as he clutched his new trophy.
As Matt bounced around beside him in excitement, Ben stuttered his way through the speech, giving shoutouts to their families and everyone who worked on the movie — including Robin Williams, who won the award for Best Supporting Actor later that night.
And while there are certainly plenty of notable and heartwarming moments in the two-minute clip, one of the main points of interest is the glum expression on Minnie Driver’s face.
As you probably know, Minnie starred in Good Will Hunting as Skylar — the love interest of Matt’s character, Will.
It’s one of her most memorable roles, and in turn, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at that year’s Oscars ceremony.
However, when Ben and Matt praised her “brilliant” performance in their speech, the camera panned over to revealed that she couldn’t have looked less happy as she stared up at the duo on stage.
Being that it was such a triumph for the movie, the look on Minnie’s face has confused fans for years — and now, we’re finally getting some answers as to exactly why she looked so sad during her friends’ big win.
Footage of the iconic acceptance speech resurfaced online recently after it was reposted by a popular Instagram account, and it didn’t take long for people to make note of Minnie’s forlorn expression, with one person writing in the comments section that she “looks so sad.”
In fact, Minnie herself chimed in to poke fun at the clip, commenting: “My face,” with a string of laughing emojis and a red heart.
And while she was there, she also decided to set the record straight and explain the heartbreaking reason for her frown.
“Matt had ended our relationship a few weeks before this, and was at the Oscars with his new gf,” she wrote. “I was devastated.”
Ending on a high note, she added: “Wish I could have celebrated more as it was an amazing moment for all of us, and for this wonderful film.”
In case you’re in need of the context, Matt and Minnie struck up a romantic bond while shooting Good Will Hunting, and wound up dating from 1997 to 1998.
It’s not clear exactly why the pair went their separate ways, however Matt broke the news of their split during an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show shortly before the Academy Awards in 1998.
“I was with Minnie for a while, but we’re not really romantically involved anymore, we’re just really good friends. I love her dearly,” he said at the time. “I care about her a lot. We care about each other a lot. It wasn’t meant to be and if it wasn’t meant to be then it’s not meant to be.”
By the time the Oscars rolled around, Matt had already started dating Winona Ryder.
Later in 1998, Minnie addressed the whole thing and criticized Matt’s decision to announce their breakup so publicly, calling it “fantastically inappropriate.”
“Everything has to be made so mythic,” she told the LA Times. “I had to be the victim. It’s horrendous breaking up with someone anyway, but to have it be so public and to be cast in a role that I would never play if they were paying me — this wronged woman!”
Reflecting on their breakup decades later, Minnie told Entertainment Tonight in 2017 that it was made all the more difficult by Matt’s skyrocketing fame in the late ‘90s and 2000s.
“I don't care who you are, that is agony and it’s like a strange, surreal dream,” she said. “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.”
Fortunately, it seems the exes were able to put the past behind them, with Minnie saying during a podcast interview last year: “We’re not friends, but I feel an enormous amount of love for him.”
Flash forward to today, and Matt eventually settled down with Luciana Barroso, who he married in 2005.
Meanwhile, Minnie recently celebrated her five-year anniversary with filmmaker Addison O’Dea, who she started dating in 2019.
