Introducing August Starring Minnie Driver

Minnie was photographed in New York at LeVue Studios by Ashley Batz. She was styled by Bailey Moon. Makeup by Gita Bass and hair by Dominick Pucciarello. Interview by Alison Engstrom. Photographer assistant Philip Vukelich and styling assistant Giulia Menechella.

on the cover Minnie is wearing a skirt by One/Of; a tank top by Calvin Klein; jewelry by Effy.

hi minnie, t’s great to connect with you again! I love having conversations about creativity and passion and following your bliss, but also learning what makes people tick. I also want to talk about The Serpent Queen, which is amazing.

It's great to be part of something I just know is good. I think probably because I have made enough I know is bad in my life. It was so wonderful to make. When you’re younger, you're so goal-oriented—it's all about the result. The older I get—and honestly probably having lost people—I realize it is about the making of things, the time you spend, the love that you give, and the joy you share. The success is the gravy.

above Minnie is wearing a shirt dress and coat by Brunello Cucinelli; heels by Dior; rings by Graziela Gems.

I’d love to talk to you about creativity and how it has played a role in your life. I recently overheard a conversation where somebody was discouraging their daughter of going into the arts. I was gutted because they said, ‘there's no money in it’. I can't imagine if I hadn't followed my passion 10 years ago and my pursuit of creativity in general how unfulfilled I would feel. How has creativity shaped you?

First of all, I take great exception to the notion of anyone telling anyone that creativity shouldn't be part of their journey because it won't make them money. You should keep that to yourself if that's true for you. But to disallow that in a child, or a young person, is completely bananas to me and anathema of being a supportive human. Clearly, I agree with creative thinking and creativity as a whole. If you are going to use money as the barometer of success to lead a happy and good life then good luck to you.

I feel like you're bankrupt, metaphorically speaking. 

Utterly because it's a finite joy. I went to a school that was progressive in as much as it saw that fostering creativity in every individual—whether they were a contemporary dancer or a supremely gifted physicist—that creative thinking was the way through all of it. We’d be working together, creating community, and then come back and go to a physics lesson, and then a dance class. Those experiences created well-rounded humans who can function in a society that has lost its way. We have to change that narrative that money is the only thing we should be aiming for. Our lives, in expression and creativity, have many forms and it's not just in the arts. Creativity lives in everything fundamentally and by definition in science. So I just reject that idea completely. Let me hear your argument for how the pursuit of money has made anything better in this world.

above Minnie is wearing a dress by Altuzarra; rings by EF Collection.

We need art. We need creativity. It's an escape from the world and these types of people who want to create this sterile and uninspired existence. 

I think we're only going to create our way out of all of the extraordinarily difficult situations that are happening in this world. We're not going to money our way out of it. We're going to community our way out of it. For me, it is a founding principle of my life. So when you talk about creativity, it has become far more like a religion than anything else in my life. At 54, you see how that has been the path that has been the most fruitful, not just for me, but for other people who I've watched in my life, in all different arenas of this world. Creativity has been the thing that has sustained them and that has furthered whatever journey they were on to express themselves and enrich the world. So I take it very sincerely.

above Minnie is wearing a dress by Akris; heels by Altuzarra.

Even your creativity had an impact on me because you're telling me your story. It's one of those things that's a circular moment.

That's amazing. It's great to have a rigorous conversation about creativity because so often, it's somehow deemed as dessert. It's extra, this thing that should be just an elective in our lives as opposed to the main event. 

I had a baby almost two years ago, and I find during this time of 1-year-old insanity that in, I'm craving it more than anything else. I value what you're saying.

You are in the weeds that first year, and not able to do anything for yourself, including going to the bathroom. I remember I was standing in the kitchen, I had been steaming yams and spinach, and I was putting it in the blender. I was like, this is creative (laughs). 

I can absolutely relate (laughs). I recently read a quote that I liked. It was about leaping and the net will appear. Was there ever a moment in your career that you took a chance and thought, I don't know where this is going to go, or I don't know what the result is, but I'm going to do it' and see if I get caught in a beautiful way. 

When I accidentally moved to New York. I didn't mean to, I meant to go for a four-day weekend to have some meetings. My first movie was about to come out and no one knew who I was. My agent at the time thought that it would be a great idea for me to go to New York. I got a job quite by chance and by a strange coincidence, while I was in one of these meetings. I went and I made this film called Big Night. I had the opportunity to go back home and I didn't.  I stayed and I was living in a hotel. I knew maybe two people. I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew that I had this feeling I needed to stick around and it was a huge leap.

I don't know if that was a virtue of youth, or whether that was just whatever my journey was, but it was so exciting to be in that much unknown. Now with the unknown, I have to work really hard to not be terrified by it.  I remember going back to that moment and thinking, you used to embrace these moments of, I do not know and I just feel that this is right. Today, I try and remember it a bit more so I can get back into that mindset because it's an amazing place to be where you are allowing and trusting that things are going to show up. The net will be there just trust your instinct rather than your fear-based strategy of I'd better do this because I'm afraid. 

It's quieting the mind, trusting the gut, and your intuition.

It's very difficult once you've got a mortgage, a child, and a partner, and when you have all these things that perhaps rely on you. It's very easy to leave at 25 an have nothing holding me back. You can just fully launch. But I think that imprint is still in all of us. Those moments don’t disappear, we just talk ourselves out of it. I try to spend some time daydreaming about what that felt like. I think that's quite a powerful thing to do—to sit around, or if I'm on a bike ride, or a walk—to just feel what it felt like to be completely unafraid and interested in what was going to show up.

How have you navigated the unknown when you became more known? I think people can look at successful people and think they have it all figured out but it isn’t always the case. How have you navigated this area as you became a household name?

Sometimes with grace and sometimes absolutely not well at all—with a complete spiraling breakdown—like every other human. That's the interesting double-edged sword I think we've forgotten about in this Instagram age of everything looking perfect, beautiful, and curated. We know fundamentally that life is not like that. We simply have to have peaks and troughs. It cannot be a flat plane of success because it doesn't exist. So it really becomes how do you navigate those moments? I wish I knew better to say to myself, oh, here we go, we're in a trough. It's okay. You just got to hang out. You've got to hold your line. You've got to just tuck in and just keep going through it. My boyfriend is brilliant at reminding me of that.

He becomes the great arbiter of it and says, you are in a trough right now. There's nothing else to be said except to do whatever you can to take care of yourself in this moment. You are going to come out of it. I love that and I wish we could remind each other of that more. There's a level of hopelessness we feel when we don’t know what is coming and when we feel like we've lost what we had and we're in a moment where there seems to be no signposts. I think it's so helpful to remind each other. Right now my son's sleeping and my partners drinking coffee. I'm going to go for a surf after this and Alcaraz made it to the Wimbledon tennis finals. Everything feels safe and beautiful in my world right now. It's so good in the moments, where we feel good, to talk with someone and say, will you remind me of this when I'm feeling scared and lost that things do change and sometimes it is just an act of faith to believe that you're going to get through something.

The facade of social media doesn’t help where perfection seems so plentiful. it can be very harmful for people who are struggling and who might think, how can I get through this? I feel for kids these days and what they're up against, because I struggle with it.

I find that a big role of my parenting now is to constantly speak up because that this is not a true representation of life. We know that the other stuff exists. I did a post at the beginning of this year where I used a rainy background because it was pouring in England. I didn't use an uplifting background because I was talking about how I felt on that particular day. I felt scared, a bit shut in, I didn’t know what was coming, and I was worried. It's amazing how the acknowledgment of that resonates with people. Yes, people want to celebrate when you're looking pretty at a premiere, or your life is rosy and you're surfing a good wave. But I think maybe that's the responsibility of people with followings on social media to acknowledge today's a hard day and the fundamental fact that life is not easy. We're raised to believe that this idea of happiness should be linear and constant and it's such a lie because actually life is very hard for most people. It is a struggle and those happy moments are the anomaly. So it's about acknowledging it.

The troughs can teach you a lot and make you more resilient but when you're in those troughs it can feel impossible. You think, am I ever going to get out? The wheels are not going up this hill.

Exactly, it’s what do I do in that moment? Sometimes it's just acknowledging that you are there. I think spending a huge amount of energy trying to get out of it can often make me feel so much worse rather than thinking, I'm not going to spin my wheels anymore, I'm going to rest here, in this moment, and trust that it will pass since all other moments of life pass.

Completely—they say, what you resist persists. It is about accepting the moment because resistance does make everything way worse. 

That’s something I started writing about this idea of radical acceptance. It is such a powerful thing to do when you're feeling disempowered. It's the one thing that you can do when you’re on your knees, whether it's grief, any form of loss, financially, emotionally, or spiritually, to just sit with it and go–excuse me for swearing–I fucking accept this. I accept that this so hard. You start feeling more powerful in your refusal to resist it.

that is so powerful. Now to talk about using your voice, you've used it a lot to talk about the ageism and sexism in Hollywood, but also other points of view. What has been your journey to finding that confidence to do so?  I feel like when women talk about the struggles, it's like we're difficult, we're not grateful, or all these things. 

I was punished for it early on and consistently; now, I don't give a fuck. I remember I sat outside a restaurant in the car with a window cracked. I was dragged out of that restaurant so many times, not for throwing food, but for voicing my opinion about things that my parents didn't like. Then that led up to speaking up on movie sets, at a time when you were fundamentally not allowed to do that and there were definitely punitive results for that. As we've evolved and moved on, there have been these movements like Time's Up and Me Too, and mechanisms have been put in place for women to have recourse, which is nice in terms of the imbalance of a woman's experience within a male-dominated world. At this point, I utterly reject the word outspoken. It is only ever applied to women and it implies that they're speaking out of turn or outside of something, as opposed to speaking from the inside in an articulate and genuine way. I've been called outspoken my whole life and it's the only thing that I find that still really gets me because it's not true, that’s just your opinion.

How do you find your flow when you're preparing for a new project? 

I have to be away from people to get into my flow, it’s something I know that about myself. My boyfriend can sit in the middle of a hurricane with his earphones in and write and be doing his thing. I have to put the white noise on. I have to get away from people and be able to look at a tree, or the sky in order to think. I try not to be so precious about it, but sometimes it's just how it is. I set up the conditions for flow and then I’ll just sit there and I'll talk to myself a lot. I'm preparing for a movie right now in the autumn, and I recently just sat and had a conversation with myself looking up at the tree in my garden going, what does she want? I’ll name the five things. How does she feel about that first thing? Oh, she feels fucking angry about it. And then maybe I'll take notes or I'll record it. I think you do whatever it takes to get into whatever feels creative and interesting do it. Also, it’s about not putting too many parameters on what it has to look like. I know my big parameter is I need to take myself away from people to get into it.

above Minnie is wearing a cardigan and skirt by Kallmeyer; heels by Prada.

Now to talk about The Serpent Queen. I read that there wasn’t too much historical information available. I’d love for you to talk about getting into Queen Elizabeth’s headspace.

I've always been fascinated with her since I was a kid. Since there isn't this limitless supply of information about her, I've covered pretty much everything that there is. I've seen the paintings and I've read the books. I've thought about her, but there is something about her that comes to meet you. When we were doing makeup tests, we saw this strange and beautiful creature revealed. She's an extraordinary character. I mean women at that time—if you think about 16th century women—weren't even allowed to own property. And there were these two women, Catherine de’ Medici and Elizabeth ruling different countries. During that time women had nothing, they had less than rights. She was already occupying this rare space. Even though I can't know for sure what that must have felt like, I know that she ruled for a long time and she was a beloved queen. I know that she had to kill people and she had to keep her lovers secret and the Virgin Queen was a brand. It sounds so funny and lofty, but it was such an honor playing her. I would play her every day for the rest of my life if I could. I love her so completely. She inspires such love and devotion from me and whenever this character is included in a film or a TV show, she does that. I don’t know how much that has to do with me, but I think that she's an eternally extraordinary character and it was such fun.

Do you think we can learn anything from them today? 

Catherine was sold into marriage when she was 12-years-old because it was a strategic marriage. She could have been killed and cleared the way for somebody else but she was appointed by the Pope and that was the beginning of her whole life. She then went to protect her children and the throne for them. There's a lot that has been perhaps misunderstood like she ruled through fear because that was her choice. There's this amazing scene I have with Samantha Morton, who plays Catherine de’ Medici, where I said, you have had to pose as a witch and I as a virgin in order to get what we want.

I think women oftentimes have to wear a mask to protect them from how much they have been disallowed to do in their lives, whether it's the patriarchy or just this general fear of women being powerful creatures. Perhaps what both of these women can teach us is about owning themselves and moving forward with that. I think younger women are much more confident in their voices and in the way that they show their bodies. I look at my child's friends and their body confidence. They have all different shapes and sizes, and they all present themselves in this beautiful confident way, and much less judgmental.

It’s very refreshing for sure. How do you stay inspired? 

Sometimes it's sort of hard fought for, but I find that seeking out people I know will lift me up and amplify a positive mind frame when I'm not feeling that way. I'll seek out the person who I know will have something inspiring and interesting to say. I love that nature will invariably change my mind if I'm feeling blocked. Going for a walk in whatever environment you live in changes everything. I'll very blatantly ask questions if I'm not feeling inspired. I will just put it out there to whatever you want to call it, Mother Nature, God, the universe, or goddess. I say, I need help around this. This is the thing that I want to feel. This is the place that I want to go. This is the thing I need help with. But going in nature is the number one inspiration for me.

Stream season 1 & 2 of ‘the serpent queen’ on starz

purchase a copy of ‘managing expectations: a memoir in essays’ by minnie driver

listen to the podast ‘minnie questions’

A special thank you to this team and Wolf Kasteler.