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AIBU?

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Original poster

minnie driver claiming she was ''sick of being super famous''

677 replies

Balgoresboy · 13/08/2021 00:05

I saw this in a headline article today online. Eh when I think of ''super famous'' I think Brad Pitt, Jenifer Aniston, Tom Cruise, J-Lo... generally people the majority of people would be familiar with and recognise their face/be a household name.

AIBU to think this b list actress is or never was ''super famous''? I struggle to think of projects she was in and I wouldn't even recognise her if I saw her on the street or on a picture. I am 35 btw too incase any1 thinks I'm too young so remember the 90s well.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
5
gobackanddoitproperly · 13/08/2021 04:30

@Earlydancing

Brad Pitt was in Titanic? 🤔
Not unless he was The Door Grin
Hannayeah · 13/08/2021 04:35

@HasselbackForLife

Oh come on, she was massively famous during the 90s. I don't really get this thread. She was in loads of popular films, Oscar nominated and always in the papers.
💕

Right?

Earlydancing · 13/08/2021 04:37

Hehe. He was the shark circling the raft. Or one of the guests clutching a drink to his chest. 😄

Grimacingfrog · 13/08/2021 04:37

What a weird thread. By far and away the majority of people over 45 consider her to have been very famous at one time. Very famous doesn't mean you've headlined a film or are well known among twelve year olds.

It means being recognisable across a wide range of demographics and MD certainly was at that time, whether or not you and your mates (Kate Winslet in Titanic better than Helen Hunt in As Good As it Gets 🤪) had heard of her. How the hell do you know what it was like to have every tabloid and gossip magazine printing an article about you being dunped on TV by your mega famous boyfriend.? Or having the tabloid press shouting out 'who's the sperm donor' about who had fathered her child.

That went on for years and it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been pretty famous. Nor would she have regularly appeared on TV talk shows, which she did at the time.

Very few people have paparazzi following them around for a sustained period. She certainly did. I would say anyone who regularly has this is pretty famous. I can also imagine that it was pretty hard to live with.

You're being nasty OP and defending your position because you don't like being called out on it.

Ajl46 · 13/08/2021 04:39

@Balgoresboy

''It’s not a mathematical equation where either of us can prove the other right or wrong.''

it sort of is though and it brings me back to my point that super stardom usually comes when the person headlined a very successful film or tv show or had a big music career. I, like others in this thread have struggled to come up with projects that would see Minnie Driver as being in the league of ever having being a super star.

When I think Good Will Hunting (which I didn't even know she was in), I think Matt Damon or Robin Williams.

Minnie Driver's role in Good Will Hunting is pivotal to Matt Damon's character development- she wasn't just an extra or walk on part.
SequinsandStiIettos · 13/08/2021 04:40

www.gq.com/story/what-ever-happened-to-brendan-fraser

Brendan Fraser believes, rightly or wrongly, that the Hollywood Film Press Association perhaps blacklisted him from 2003. He also got depressed after being rejected for Superman. He self-sabotaged doing Looney Toons to punch himself and after the divorce in 2009 - and this is me saying it not the article - he was taking any part really (the divorce was expensive).
His last decent role for me would have been in the Quiet American (shelved for a year because of 9/11).

Earlydancing · 13/08/2021 04:41

Honestly, I was in my 30s in the 90s. We used to go to the cinema quite a bit. She was really a support actress. She was in the newspapers for not naming her baby's father rather than for acting work. No shade on her, she worked and made a nice life for herself. And being B list is fantastic. But she was never a massive star. I bet some of those films in the 90s were never even released outside the UK.

Earlydancing · 13/08/2021 04:48

"Minnie Driver's role in Good Will Hunting is pivotal to Matt Damon's character development- she wasn't just an extra or walk on part."

But a character can be pivotal without the it being a big or even interesting role. In Sleepers, which I loved, the actors that held your attention were the guys with the past. Kevin Bacon was fantastic. You couldn't take your eyes off him. He was just so moving and brilliant. Minnie Drivers character was more like a plot device. She was good, not saying she wasn't, but you weren't that interested if she was there or not. The film was about the boys as men, not about her.

HarebrightCedarmoon · 13/08/2021 04:56

She was massively well-known and a subject of press attention in the late 1990s, certainly famous enough to be able to make a comment that she was fed up of it. Someone who was 12 then does not have the same popular cultural references as someone who was in their twenties then, no matter how many films you watched.

SequinsandStiIettos · 13/08/2021 04:58

95-97 and arguably 99, so 3 years of being relatively well-known imho
I don't think anyone is disputing, including the actress herself, that her fame subsided after that.
By the time she had Henry in 2008, she was doing more tv (father was Timothy J Lea who wrote for the Riches). I thought it admirable she protected him for as long as she did, 4 years, until he got on board with co-parenting.

AuntieJoyce · 13/08/2021 05:08

All very subjective OP

Heck in fact I have, people were saying online Luke Perry was the next James Dean after he died and I argued that he was far from James Dean fame or reputation career wise

James Dean only made three films, he was very much an emerging talent so still building a reputation

Minnie Driver was very famous for a while yes. She was great in The Riches

PineappleTart · 13/08/2021 05:39

This is such a weird thread. But here's my tuppence worth.

I'm in my forties and not into celeb culture but Minnie Driver is someone who I'd recognise. For a while she was never off the telly in something or another. IIRC she was interviewed a lot because she has a sharp humour and seemed pretty open. OP you might not rate GPB but it's an absolute cult film.

snackodactyl · 13/08/2021 05:39

i can remember Minnie Driver from as early as a Right Guard advert she did before her career took off. i think she did hit that super famous point for a while and i’m not a superfan or anything. i like her instagram, she seems really nice and i felt for her when her mum died recently. her appearance on Jay Rayner’s podcast is a really good listen.

HarebrightCedarmoon · 13/08/2021 05:42

She's also quite distinctive looking and her name is pretty memorable also.

BeachDrifting · 13/08/2021 05:50

I know someone who worked as a film extra and worked with her. Apparently she was very bitchy. Not nice at all. That might have something to do with why her career ended. People don’t want to work with people like her. It bites you in the end.

OldTurtleNewShell · 13/08/2021 05:57

@Balgoresboy

But when I think of ''well known for a short time in the 90s'' I think Mena Suvari or Neve Campbell who were everywhere for a stint before vanishing, but not Minnie Driver.
I would put her as more well known than the other two, and I'd describe her as super famous. It might be that she wasn't as well known in the UK as she was outside of it (where I grew up). If you'd asked me as a teen in the nineties, I'd have known exactly who she was and called her an A lister. She was certainly famous enough to have been seriously targeted by the paparazzi which must have been very hard.
EdgeOfACoin · 13/08/2021 06:00

@Balgoresboy

''They’re exactly who I’d categorise her with.''

Eh Neve Campbell headlined several big successful movies in the 96-2000 era as did Mena Suvari and she even had a few hits in the 2000s with the American Pies. Minnie Driver was never on their level.

Yes she was.
EdgeOfACoin · 13/08/2021 06:01

Minnie Driver was big in the 90s and she has a very distinctive face, so I imagine she gets recognised a lot.

I remember her mainly from Circle of Friends - she was huge after that film.

EdgeOfACoin · 13/08/2021 06:05

I was about 15 or 16 when Minnie Driver was at her height of fame.

RavenclawsRoar · 13/08/2021 06:06

I'm a similar age to you OP and I know Minnie Driver but wouldn't recognise some of the other people you've mentioned as being on par with her. I think most people our age would at least have heard of her name and that does make her pretty famous I reckon, considering we were kids/young teens at the time.

lifehappened · 13/08/2021 06:09

How strange when you all know who she is that implies she's pretty famous

AbsolutelyPatsy · 13/08/2021 06:09

her face is recognizable. so she is pretty famous yes

EdgeOfACoin · 13/08/2021 06:10

Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman was her first role as the lead lady, but she didn't headline that, Richard Gear did. Thus actually she was in a support role.

Julia Roberts had been in Steel Magnolias a year or two before Pretty Woman, alongside Dolly Parton. She wasn't completely unknown when she got the role in PW.

user1471560845 · 13/08/2021 06:11

What a really strange thing to get your knickers in a twist about OP 😂

Sakesman · 13/08/2021 06:11

Famous enough for it to be a pain I’d imagine. Like overtime to a regular biddy- you want it but it’s annoying to do