Minnie Driver is looking back at her early days in the entertainment industry.
In a newly released excerpt from her memoir Managing Expectations, published by The Times on Saturday (May 7), she recalled attending a terrible audition for a TV commercial.
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Minnie explained that the commercial was to sell chocolate and the director began by asking her if she’d seen When Harry Met Sally.
“You know the scene where she fakes an orgasm?” he asked, instructing her to, “Eat a piece of chocolate and do that.”
“Fake an orgasm?” she replied.
“Yes. Unless you fancy having a real one,” he said.
“I thought about all the girls waiting outside,” Minnie wrote. “All of us vying for an opportunity that was actually humiliation dressed up in a pick-me! outfit. I wanted to run out there and warn them. I wanted to tell them we were better than this, better than being lunchtime entertainment for a bunch of pervy execs, their perviness sanctioned by this being considered ‘work.’ But of course I didn’t, because the fire was lit and it required fuel, and any fuel, however troubling, will burn just the same.”
She went on to say she ate a bit of “revolting” chocolate and began “throwing my head around like Meg Ryan in Katz’s Deli.”
Minnie added that the director, who she referred to as “Martin Scorsleazy”, commended her and told her to “really show us what that chocolate can do for you.”
“I attempted a few more groans and seizures and then, realizing there was nowhere to spit out the chocolate, I did what so many women do in the name of pleasing men, and I swallowed,” she wrote.
The actress was then asked to do it again, but she told the execs in the room she didn’t think she’d be able to.
“Course you can, love,” someone told her, “that’s the best bit about being a girl!”
“No, what I meant to say was I won’t do it again because I will throw up,” she responded.
Minnie added, “They thought I was talking about the chocolate, but it was really my shame at having gone along with the whole grotesquery. And the f–king chocolate. Scorsleazy sneered and rolled his eyes. ‘Well, all the other girls have apparently very much enjoyed this.’ I gathered the good coat I’d worn off the floor, smiled mightily and said, ‘They were faking it.’ As exits go, it wasn’t bad.”
Managing Expectations will be released May 12.
Last month, Minnie opened up about her “miracle” pregnancy at the age of 37.