Minnie Driver: 'It Was Devastating' When Producer Said She Wasn't 'Hot Enough' for Good Will Hunting

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Minnie Driver is opening up about the "awfulness" of the acting world.

In a recent interview with The Cut following the release of her new book Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays, the 52-year-old actress was asked about the time a producer allegedly said she was not "hot enough" for the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, something Driver has previously discussed.

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"It was devastating," Driver told The Cut. "To be told at 26 that you're not sexy when you maybe just got over all your teenage angst and started to think, you know, Maybe in the right light and the right shoes and the right dress, I'm all right."

Driver, who played Skylar opposite Matt Damon's Will Hunting, went on to receive her first Academy Award nomination for the role.

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"I certainly had insecurities growing up. That I was not gorgeous. I was not super pretty. The idea that that was the currency I was then meant to pursue, and I was meant to try and find ways of making myself prettier. I thank God that I didn't do a ton of stuff that I could have then gone and done," Driver said. "It could have been way more damaging than it was."

She added that, at the time, "I had such a lovely family going, 'F--- that. You're gorgeous on all these levels. And if one person doesn't think that you're pretty enough, f--- it.' "

Driver first told the story to Andy Cohen on a 2016 episode of Watch What Happens Live when she was asked about the rudest comment she's ever received in Hollywood.

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"I really can't [name names] because then I'll never work again, and I have to work because I have a mortgage," Driver said at the time, adding that the unnamed producer "did not think I was hot enough to be in that film and did not want me in the film."

Driver said costars Damon and Ben Affleck as well as director Gus Van Sant "fought very hard" for her to be in the movie.

"I am grateful to them until this day," she said.

Although Driver thanked her supportive colleagues, she's also honest about how hard she's worked to get where she is today.

She recently told PEOPLE she had to "fight really hard for every job," calling that the "first lesson" she learned in the business after her breakout role in the 1995 film Circle of Friends.

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"It's never just going to come easily," Driver said. "And I think that's okay because the payoff is huge, like emotionally being able to do what you love for a living and make money at it."