Minnie Driver didn’t know about her half-siblings until she was 12 years old. Credit: Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic
It’s like something out of a soap opera: English actress Minnie Driver’s father had a secret family. Actually, that secret family was Minnie.
Driver, who will appear on the BBC’s genealogy show “Who Do You Think You Are?” this week, grew up the daughter of Ronnie Driver and his mistress, the model Gaynor Millington. For years Driver’s wife Annie and their daughter Kate had no idea that Minnie, her mother, and her older sister existed, according to the Telegraph. And in fact, Driver herself didn’t learn about her father’s other family until she was 12 years old.
Driver grew up knowing almost nothing about her father’s side of the family. She never met her grandparents, or even saw a photograph of them together. But she recently had a son of her own, and she doesn’t want him to inherit that same legacy of secrets. “I want Henry to have a different experience to what I had,” she said.”Where I come from there are these big gaps, and I would like to fill those gaps for him.”
On”Who Do You Think You Are?” she’ll get to fill in those gaps: She learns that her father was a war hero in World War II, and that he had an earlier marriage and a son who died before Driver learned he existed.
