S14, Ep2 How To Fail: Minnie Driver
How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
Sony Music
4.8 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2022
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
She joins me to talk about her failures in acting, her failure to get an agent or to perform a convincing orgasm at an audition (a crash course in sexism in the industry), her run-ins with Harvey Weinstein, her experiences in the fakery of Hollywood and how that affected her mental health, and her self-perceived failure to get married. We also touch on the death of her beloved mother, becoming a single parent herself and what it means to be a fully-realised woman in her 50s. I adored this conversation - Minnie is so wise and eloquent and has really, truly spent time thinking about what life means. As such, she's the most perfectly imperfect guest.
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Minnie's memoir-ish, Managing Expectations is out now: https://www.waterstones.com/book/managing-expectations/minnie-driver/2928377083793
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Minnie Driver @driverminnie
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day. The podcast that celebrates the things |
| 0:19.2 | that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding |
| 0:25.5 | that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger because learning how to fail in life actually means |
| 0:32.2 | learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day and every |
| 0:38.4 | week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest today was one |
| 0:45.2 | of the breakout stars of 90's cinema. She was Benny in Circle of Friends, starred opposite John |
| 0:51.6 | Qsack in Gross Point Blank and was nominated for an Oscar for Goodwill Hunting. Her later career |
| 0:58.2 | took her to television where she's acted with Eddie Isard in the Riches, had a recurring role in |
| 1:03.0 | Will & Grace and appears in a string of hit shows including Modern Love and Starstruck. She was |
| 1:09.7 | always unique in the airbrushed superficiality of Hollywood. Her beauty was not blonde or bland. |
| 1:16.7 | Instead, she arrived on the scene with a mass of brown curls, unapologetic freckles and a straightforward |
| 1:22.8 | compulsion to tell the truth. I felt like the last thing I'd actually intended was to become an actress |
| 1:29.4 | she writes in her new memoir. Everything subsequently was luck and circumstance, a currency's carved by |
| 1:36.0 | the agency of something other than me. She was born in London but raised in Barbados with her older |
| 1:42.6 | sister until the age of seven. Her mother was not married to her father because he already had a wife, |
| 1:49.1 | an early taste of the complexity of human relationships that was to stand her in good stead. |
| 1:55.7 | She was called Amelia but it was her sister Kate who gave her the nickname Mini. It's stuck and |
| 2:01.3 | she's now known as Mini Driver. It's under this name that she will be publishing her debut book |
| 2:07.6 | Managing Expectations. Described as a tellmost memoir, it is truthful, funny and wise. |
| 2:15.4 | In her own words, it's about how things not working out actually worked out in the end. As such, |
| 2:22.6 | she could not be more perfect for this podcast Mini Driver. Welcome to How to Fail. |
| 2:29.1 | It's very nice to be here. I am failure incarnate. |
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