Minnie Driver says producers on 1998 film wouldn’t let her wear a wetsuit ‘so they could see my nipples’

British-American Driver plays a local woman named Karen in the Mikael Salomon thriller about a bank heist that takes place during torrential storms.

The actor spoke about the filming conditions during an appearance on Jameela Jamil's SiriusXM podcast I Weigh.

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“There were huge rain machines. We shot crazy hours. It was tough, like, it was a tough movie, but everybody else could wear a wetsuit underneath their costume,” Driver said.

“And I was told by the producers that I couldn’t because they wanted to see my nipples, and that there was no point in having the wet T-shirt if you couldn’t have what was underneath it.”

The Good Will Hunting star said she complained to her agent about the situation; however, after doing so, “people wouldn’t speak to me on the set”.

“There was this kind of – I was so punished for it,” Driver said on the podcast, further alleging that her complaints were leaked to the press “as if there were nothing to complain about and that I were just complaining”.

“So it’s this sort of – not even existential, this gaslighting, media gaslighting that’s supported by the environment that you are in. And then you have to stay in that environment,” she said.

“You know, we shot that movie for seven months. So, eventually, you do turn on yourself. You do go, ‘It was my fault for saying anything, you stupid big mouth. You should have shut up.’ And that goes in and then alters the way in which you kind of see yourself and your natural inclination to put your hand up and go ‘This isn’t right.’”

The film’s producers Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon, and Gary Levinsohn have been contacted for comment.

The film, a box office flop which made just $19m in the US, also starred Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater.

In his contemporaneous one-star review, prominent critic Roger Ebert wrote: “Hard Rain is one of those movies that never convince you its stories are really happening. From beginning to end, I was acutely aware of actors being paid to stand in cold water. Suspension of my disbelief in this case would have required psychotropic medications.”