Minnie Driver proudly embraces her rarely-seen son Henry, 16, as they leave dinner in Santa Monica

Minnie Driver embraced her son Henry after enjoying dinner at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica on Thursday night.

The 54-year-old actress cut a chic figure in a brown leather jacket layered over a plain white T-shirt and white jeans.

She teamed it with a pair of brown suede boots and toted her belongings in a small Louis Vuitton bag.

Meanwhile Henry, 16, donned a quarter zip navy sweater, black jeans, and white trainers.

The pair appeared in great spirits, with Minnie wrapping her arms around her son as they departed the celebrity hotspot.

Minnie had been notoriously secretive about Henry's father when she first announced her pregnancy, but became more relaxed about her little boy as he grew up.

In 2012, she told The Observer magazine: ‘I don’t need to protect him any more. He can fend for himself. He’s a grown-up.’

Henry's father was then revealed to be Timothy J Lea, co-producer of Driver's TV drama The Riches, as well as hit shows CSI New York and Law and Order.

Driver dated him for a short time before they split up.

It comes after Minnie cheerfully joked about the raging mania for plastic surgery, as showbiz figures galore alter their features.

'Guys,' she said in a perfect deadpan in a new video she posted to her Instagram page: 'are we all getting new faces for Christmas?'

The Good Will Hunting actress continued: ‘Cause where you getting them from? And do you think they’re gonna run out? And has anyone got a discount code?'

She threw another joke into the caption, writing: 'Quite hard to put under the tree. #newface #faceshop #discountcodes.'

Her latest cheeky post comes less than three weeks after the 54-year-old actress shared a makeup-free selfie to her Instagram page.

Allowing the camera to get a close view of her features, she used the caption to share the secret to her own luminous complexion.

Her radiant appearance was the work of Keren Bartov, an Israeli aesthetician whose clients have included Gal Gadot, Demi Moore, Kim Kardashian and Julia Roberts.

'Ok, I’m pretty vain, so posting pictures without a scrap of makeup and un-touched up, are rare,' Minnie wrote alongside the selfie.

'The only reason I’m doing it now is because I’ve been ill with flu and have felt every one of my years recently, and I’m pretty astonished that my friend Keren can make me look like this: Christmas glow without the 5 mulled wines.'

Earlier this year, Minnie reflected on how the Hollywood climate has changed in terms of offering opportunities to women in middle age.

'We’re allowed to be over 40 now. It is different,' she told People during a panel discussion that was held over the summer.

'I don't know what that was done waking up to the idea that women are really just hitting their stride when they've, I think been through the gauntlet of only being seen sexually,' the The Phantom Of The Opera actress shared.

Now, she said, roles for women are able to embrace the 'extraordinary expansiveness that comes with getting older,' including but not limited to motherhood.

'I watched a film the other night that I really wanted to be in and I am so glad I'm not in that bloody film,' Minnie candidly confessed.

'Because I've been conditioned to think that because that was the best that was on offer at that time and everyone was vying for like the same part.'

Her own upcoming projects include The Household Guide To Dying, an adaptation of a novel by Australian author Debra Adelaide about an advice columnist who discovers she is terminally ill and attempts to prepare her family for life without her.

She is also part of the cast of the upcoming drama Angels In The Asylum, inspired by a BBC report on 50 women with typhoid who were kept locked away in isolation at a psychiatric hospital in Surrey from 1907 onwards.

The movie features a cast that includes Simon Pegg, Miriam Margolyes and Katherine Waterston, the daughter of Law & Order icon Sam Waterston.