Minnie Driver: 'This is such vindication'

Minnie Driver's been nominated for every award under the sun, but it's a little Lifetime movie she made this year that she holds closest to her heart.

"This is a special one," says Driver of Return to Zero, a film about an expecting couple whose child dies in the womb. "We made this film for $800,000. We ran out of money. We couldn't finish it. Families who lost children contributed to our Kickstarter fund so we could finish this film. And when we showed it to distributors in town no one would touch it. They didn't know how to market it. And then Lifetime stepped in."

On Thursday, Driver's efforts were rewarded with a best-actress Emmy nomination for a miniseries or movie. "You just need someone to champion it," she says. "This is such vindication. This town is run on huge campaigns and $100 million movies, and for something so small to rise to the top, it's exactly why I do what I do."

Still, it was a tough movie to make, Driver admits. "I remember it was just the darkest time. I'd been through a really bad breakup and I was shooting this movie about the saddest thing that had ever happened. And yet there was this light in all of this darkness."

Walking the Emmys red carpet, she says, will mark "the biggest victory lap of my career. I'm not kidding. I know the other lovely beautiful projects I've been nominated for for Oscars and Golden Globes and Emmys, they had a lot behind them, a lot of momentum. This is the little engine that could."

There's just one problem: She's stumped with how to celebrate today. "I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee and a snoring dog. I just dropped my son at camp. I'll probably go to a dance class, to tell you the truth," she says happily.