Manilla Press to publish the “tell-most” memoir of Minnie Driver

Manilla Press has acquired a dazzling debut memoir, featuring beautifully written scenes from the life of actress Minnie Driver.

Margaret Stead, Publisher, acquired UK & Commonwealth (excl. Canada) rights from Cait Hoyt at CAA.

Managing Expectations is a collection of delicately crafted, heartfelt essays, described as a ‘tell-most’, in which Minnie Driver uses her formidable storytelling skills to examine and understand her less-than-ordinary life.

Suffused with warmth and humour, Minnie shares poignant, candid and honest stories of her unconventional childhood, the shock of fame, motherhood, love, success, failure, the power of sisterly love, and the loss of her beloved mother. In her own words, it’s about how things not working out actually worked out in the end, and how reaching for the dream is easily more interesting, expansive, sad and funny than the dream itself coming true.

Margaret Stead said: ‘Managing Expectations is poignant, clever, laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad. Who knew that Minnie Driver could write like a dream as well as everything else she’s done? Minnie is a joy to work with. She has so much wisdom to share, and this memoir demonstrates her wonderful ability as a writer, which we are thrilled to showcase for the first time.’

Minnie Driver said: ‘I have spent the greater part of the last 30 years synthesising other people’s stories. It was fun; it still is. But eventually, if storytelling is the central thesis of your life, you start to question why you aren’t telling your own. I am aware that what most people want from a celebrity memoir is juicy, behind the scenes intel and while there is a little of that in my book, there’s rather more of the juicy, behind the scenes intel of an ordinary human life, which is sometimes made extraordinary by circumstance. It seems to me that this is relatable; that no matter what you do for a living, things are both hard and exalted in life, love works out or it doesn’t, we are both confident and insecure and there is no glamour in profound loss. The films I like best, both to watch and be in, are the ones that make you laugh and also cry. They don’t need to be life changing for the audience, but they do need to make you feel. I tried to choose stories to tell with this in mind, to choose the ones that are most connected to the brilliant, messy business of being alive.’

Minnie Driver is best known for her breakout role in Circle of Friends and the 1997 film Good Will Hunting(which reaped nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and a Screen Actors Guild Award). She has appeared in numerous TV programmes, including The Riches, starring opposite Eddie Izzard, for which she was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe. She is also a singer, with three studio albums. Driver will next be seen in Searchlight Pictures’ biopic Chevalier and 20th Century’s Rosaline. She most recently appeared in the latest adaptation of Cinderella on Amazon, in Modern Love, and has appeared as a recurring character in Will and Grace, which was recently rebooted, and in Speechless. ​The second season of her iHeart original podcast, Minnie Questions with Minnie Driver, will premiere in January 2022.

Managing Expectations will be published in hardback, audio and eBook in May 2022. It will be published simultaneously by HarperOne in the US.