LOS ANGELES — Talk about a career in high gear.

Over the course of five weeks, Minnie Driver will have delivered a new album, performed in concert, appeared in a new big-screen musical and marked the start of the second season of her latest TV series when “About a Boy” returns to NBC on Tuesday night.

Based on the 1998 Nick Hornby novel and 2002 film starring Hugh Grant, the series spins around a man-child, the neighbor kid he befriends and that boy’s eccentric, sometimes overbearing mother, Fiona.

“She’s odd, and, you know, and I don’t ever want to ever play anything linear and unconflicted,” Driver said. “It’s fun playing a messy person.”

Last week saw the arrival of Driver’s third album for the Rounder Zoe label, “Ask Me to Dance,” a compilation of covers by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to The Cure.

“Even though I didn’t write them, (the songs are) linked to very specific memories and very specific moments of my life,” Driver said.

Next month, she’s back in the music business, but as an actress on the big screen playing what Driver called “a mean momager” in “Beyond the Lights.”

Some 17 years after her big breakthrough, an Oscar-nominated role in “Good Will Hunting,” Driver isn’t taking her multifaceted career for granted.

“The grace of being 44 years old is that you wake up every day with a conscious breath going, ‘This is absolutely amazing, that this is happening to me. And this is my life and I am deeply deeply grateful.”‘

– From news service reports

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