Her new role as singer/songwriter allows Minnie Driver to 'stand up by myself and be the woman I am'. Tony Clayton-Lea met her before a performance in Dublin.
The very first thing I notice about Minnie Driver is her face; not the dressing room at Dublin's Olympia theatre, which seems garlanded with rather more goodies than most support acts can usually request; not the fact that she's staying at The Morrison, certainly not the kind of accommodation fit for a mere support act; and not the surprisingly statuesque figure of Driver, who, at 5' 10" plus high heels and hair, has to stoop to enter the room. No, her face is very unusual because it is shaped - and I mean clearly defined, not something vaguely outlined - like a 50 pence piece.
It's disconcerting only at certain times - when she says something in a certain way, for instance, that stretches the skin and rearranges the cheekbones; at all other times it's as you would expect: radiant, pretty, and as sound as a pound.
But what, I hear you ask, is all this support act lark? Supporting actress, surely? Actually, no. Support act is the correct term because at the moment Driver is in singer/songwriter mode and on the promotion trail of gigs and interviews to promote her début album, Everything I've Got In My Pocket. Ordinarily, this would be the kind of news to make you take refuge in Falluja; the subject of actors playing the pop singer game has, justifiably, quite an inglorious history, from Robert Mitchum to Keanu Reeves.
The difference with Driver is that she has been singing since she was in her mid-teens. The difference with Driver is that she isn't half bad at all.
Born Amelia Driver in London in 1970, she was raised by her interior designer mother Gaynor, and her multi-millionaire financier father Ronald. Home was divided between London and Barbados; when her parents split up, Driver was initially enrolled at posh UK boarding school Bedales and subsequently sent to finishing schools (they still exist, apparently) in Paris and Grenoble. She then went on to study drama at London's Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. In the early 1990s, she had recorded an album for Island records, but this was shelved.
The hurt of being shunted aside was assuaged somewhat by bit parts in various UK television series (notably, The Politician's Wife) and, eventually, the lead role (and her feature movie début) in the 1995 adaptation of Maeve Binchy's Circle Of Friends.
As an actress, she started off well: Circle Of Friends was followed by Big Night (1996), Sleepers (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997) and Grosse Point Blank (1997). In the past six years, however, she has experienced her star descending with a few shoddy movies (Return To Me, High Heels and Low Life and Hope Springs) and the sense that her role as Hollywood's British girl du jour was being overtaken by the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Driver's début solo album, then, arrives at a time when her high profile movie career seems to be in the doldrums (she says she lost out on two much-fought-after movie roles to the same person) and when her heart has been bruised (the majority of the songs on the record have been influenced by her broken relationship with actor Josh Brolin).
How, I ask amidst the cracked and faded opulence of the support act dressing room, is this side of her career going? "I can't judge success of it by anything other than how good I feel doing it," she says. "I learned that from making films that made a lot of money or tanked, that were or were not critically acclaimed. You learn that it's the process, the doing of it that counts. It's been that way with the music - every step of the way we just did what we felt was the right thing."
The main stumbling block she knew she would come up against was one of perception. Generally speaking, people like to place their movie and music celebrities in separate and distinct boxes. She mints a 50 pence face: "I know, I know. I suppose I got over that block by realising I couldn't. If you're in the public eye, you learn the hard way that you can't change people's perceptions. The best you can do is to offer up the truest version of yourself in situations like this [she looks around the room, points to my tape recorder] or in interviews on the radio where you can represent yourself. I can't worry about what people think because otherwise I wouldn't have the time to do anything else. You've got to try and get past the fact that everyone is going to have an opinion."
So far, opinions are very positive. Driver has gone the independent route, declining to sign to a major record label when they "advised" her to write her songs more in the style of US singer Sheryl Crow.
"That was something I just couldn't do, much as I like Sheryl's music. I understood their comments from a commercial point of view, but [looking around the dressing room again] I clearly didn't make this record to make money or garner more fame. It was definitely the doing of it."
What of people's perceptions of the record? It's quite a low-key work, rooted in the tradition of folksy Americana but also very assured and melodic. Will people expect something a tad more driven from Driver? "You know what? We all have our moments, but I think the reason I've managed to stay as sane as I have throughout the whole of the celebrity process is having friends and family who are beautifully and brutally honest about stuff that surrounds the status of celebrity. I believe that the record - whether you like the music or not - is honest.
"I was confident enough to realise that not everyone would love it; the bottom line is that I was offering it up because as an artist this is the kind of thing I do. I think some people will like it, but there will be some people who will hammer it just because they can. Seeing the positive audience reaction on the tour has meant something very special to me; people going out of their way to be nice. That was the best I could have hoped for. I didn't expect to avoid hammering from certain aspects of the media because that always comes with the territory."
And herein lies the rub. Driver has regularly been portrayed as something of a diva. Demanding this (possibly), ordering that (maybe), she has through various sections of the media developed a reputation as an arrogant shrew. Well, call me every one of the Blind Boys of Alabama if you must, but throughout our meeting this writer witnessed neither a caterwauling Act-Or nor a singer/songwriter manqué, but rather a sweet, polite, almost apologetic person. True, she clearly wasn't enamoured of her dressing room (me neither, to be honest; the paint on those walls!), but later that night she took to the Olympia stage with a mixture of warmth and familiarity.
Currently at a crossroads in her career, if the movie side of her life doesn't work out (although she is at pains to recommend the not-yet-released Owning Mahoney, which she co-stars in with Phillip Seymour Hoffman) it's possible that music will take its place. The movies, I point out, are clearly an act, whereas the music is truly Minnie Driver. So which one would she like to work best?
"It's so gratifying to stand up with one's own truth," she says in a very finishing school manner just before she teeters off for her soundcheck, "and not the words of another person that is filtered through the eyes of a director, the eyes, ears and hand of an editor, and the eye of a studio and a publicity department. To stand up by myself and be the woman I am is a relief and release. It makes me feel that I'm taking responsibility for my life, which is a great feeling because you're no longer depending on other people to project an image of you."
Part of stopping to make the record, Driver implies, was to pause for breath in her own life. Why has it taken so long, I ask.
"I don't think I had grown up enough."
Everything I've Got In My Pocket (Liberty/EMI) is currently on release. Driver also sings in Joel Schumacher's adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, scheduled for release in December
Seven things you probably don't know about Minnie Driver
• Her real Christian name is Amelia (Minnie stems from her sister Kate being unable to pronounce her name as a child).
• Because she was taller than Circle of Friends co-star, Chris O'Donnell, Driver had to walk in a ditch when they were filming their stroll in Knockglen.
• Driver intends to write a book about her experiences visiting a Phnom Penh factory for Oxfam International, to raise awareness about fair trade issues.
• Driver has had a few well-known boyfriends: musician Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters), and actors Josh Brolin, Harrison Ford, Matt Damon and John Cusack.
• US television network NBC has given Driver the green light to her own series.
• Driver appeared in Goldeneye as a Russian lounge singer.
• When Driver was recording The Politician's Wife, she also worked at various London clubs singing jazz and playing guitar to supplement her income.