For women given names like Amelia or Claudia, who attended single-sex boarding schools, with connections that go centuries deep, there’s a very British expression that is deployed with a mix of sneering and a sliver of privilege envy: “jolly hockey sticks”. You know these people – pop culture tells us they end up in PR and have glossy manes.

I know only one real-life posh Amelia who escaped this fate, and perhaps it helped that she changed her name and is wildly talented to boot. I’m talking about the wonderful actor Minnie Driver, whom I have loved for almost 20 years.

I first saw Driver, 46, playing the mistress of an ex-KGB agent in the James Bond film GoldenEye, but it was as Debi in Grosse Pointe Blank that I fell in love with her. Sporting a flawless American accent, Driver imbued Debi with a spiky charm (all sharp side-eyes and flashes of a genuinely warm smile) that almost steals the film. She was nominated for an Oscar for playing the luminous and whip-smart Skylar in Good Will Hunting, but my favourite performance of hers is in the little-watched romantic comedy Return To Me: here, her warmth practically radiates through the screen.

Driver has impeccable comedy timing and a sophisticated magnetism. Her look is so distinctive (that jaw! those curls!) but such is her power to inhabit her characters that I buy her performance in every role. Oh, and she sings, too. (I even bought her first album on CD.)

These days Driver’s playing the tough and hilarious Maya, a mum to three kids (one of whom has cerebral palsy), on new TV sitcom Speechless. She is, predictably, great. Listen, Minnie Driver can’t help it. She’s just that good.