Minnie Driver Says Marrying Ex-Fiancé Josh Brolin Would’ve Been 'the Biggest Mistake of My Life'

Minnie Driver is looking back at her past loves — including her relationship with ex-fiancé Josh Brolin.

In a new, wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times — published on Saturday, July 6 — the Good Will Hunting actress, 54, said she is glad she and Brolin, 56, never tied the knot.

Recalling being 12 years old and learning that her father, Ronnie Driver, had another wife and family, and that her parents had never been married during their 16-year relationship, Driver revealed to The Times that this revelation — which her mother, Gaynor Churchward, told her in “a moment of rage” — warped her idea of relationships for years to come.

“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,” Driver told the outlet. “So I would carry on longing to be married and to have that conservative version [of a relationship], find men who had no interest in that, and then if one did, run a mile.”

While discussing her history of partners who were “so not the right men to be married to,” she brought up Brolin, whom she met on the set of 2000’s Slow Burn.

Reflecting on their 2001 engagement — the only time she's ever been engaged — Driver told The Times that had the actors made it to the altar, “it would have been, I think, the biggest mistake of my life.”

Driver and Brolin were engaged for five and a half months, and called off their wedding plans in October 2001, ABC News reported at the time.

"Minnie Driver and Josh Brolin have decided to cancel their wedding plans. Their decision is mutual and amicable,” a rep for Driver told the outlet, adding that the couple never set a date.

Over two decades later, Brolin is married to Kathryn Boyd Brolin — they tied the knot in 2016 — and Driver has found the right guy for her, writer and filmmaker Addison O’Dea, she told The Times. 

"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,” she said of O’Dea.

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Prior to Brolin, Driver was linked to another actor, her Good Will Hunting costar, Matt Damon. Earlier this year, the Ella Enchanted actress revealed what she would tell her 25-year-old self after their 1998 split.

"I wish I could have told her, ‘Honey it’s cool, you can celebrate and life’s gonna be great and beautiful and hard and amazing,’ ” Driver said on The Jennifer Hudson Show in March. “'You’re going to love again, it’ll be fine.’ ”