The Maverick Spirit Award is the Cinequest film festival’s highest honor. Recent past recipients have included William H. Macy, Edward James Olmos, Sir Ben Kingsley, Jon Polito, and Sir Ian McKellan. On Saturday, March 3, actress Minnie Driver joined their ranks, accepting the Maverick Spirit Award after a discussion of her works with Cinequest co-founder Kathleen J. Powell and a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Driver discussed her career and her approach to acting in the hourlong interview. Her past film credits have included a wide variety of films. Asked which she likes better, comedy or drama, Driver says, “Oh, its like choosing between your kids; I love them both.” She has also done quite a bit of voice acting, which she says is “a rare discipline…I think it’s good for actors, it hones you.”
In 1998, Driver was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in “Good Will Hunting.” Even though she didn’t win, she said the experience of being nominated was a “big jolt,” and added, “It shouldn’t be that way, but people take you more seriously. … It can turn your head for a bit.” The hardest part to deal with was the intense media scrutiny and thorough coverage of her life. “It’s so subjective, but people take it seriously,” she said.
Driver works for women’s rights with Oxfam, and her efforts have crossed over into her work as well. She did the film “The Virgin of Juarez,” a fictional account of the hundreds of women kidnapped and murdered near the Mexico/US border as an outgrowth of her work for women’s rights. She hopes that the film will make more people aware of the crimes.
When it comes to acting, Driver says you can learn from your surroundings: “if you pay attention and keep your eyes and ears open, everything will teach you,” including crew, extras, director, and fellow actors. “You take bits from everybody.” She also emphasized the need not to “take yourself too seriously,” saying actors must bring “your imagination and your willingness to look stupid” to their roles. She said that the most important thing she’s learned is not to worry about the final product or what people think, just the process of acting: “stay in the doing of it, and out of the result.”
“I don’t have a method, really,” she concluded. “My method is just to love the character.”