The rise of Jennifer Coolidge, from American Pie to Golden Globes star

Jennifer Coolidge won the Golden Globe for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a limited series, anthology series or motion picture made for television for her role in The White Lotus. Photo / AP

Never mind All About Eve. Tuesday night’s Golden Globes were All About Jennifer. If Eve, the ruthless ingenue who inexorably inhabits Bette Davis’s enviable life, was the nightmarish prototype of a new kind of stop-at-nothing ambitious young lady in 1950, then Jennifer Coolidge is equally emblematic for 2023 as a woman who’s experienced her shares of lows, and is now triumphing - aged 61.

Coolidge, who picked up an award for her performance as billionaire heiress Tanya in dark comedy White Lotus, is a one-woman torch song, with gags. Dressed in glitter, feathers and crystal-embellished heels, it’s no wonder we’re all cheering her on.

Arguably Coolidge is now bigger than the show itself - someone who embraces life and all its wrinkles, with charm and an infectious sense of humour that’s much needed right now. When asked about her dream role after winning her Globe, she said she’d love to play a dolphin. Who knows if she was serious, but if anyone can pull it off it’s her.

Even if your gag reflex goes into overdrive at the Hollywood standing ovation, the one the audience gave Coolidge on Tuesday, as she was awarded Best Supporting Actress, at least it had the distinction of being merited.

Coolidge is a unique actress who invests the most banal dialogue with deliciously perverse shades of Truman Capote. The tiny, darting eyes - sly, mad or in need of some Ritalin? - the breathy drawl, the lingering vowels that can last as long as a mint julep, the visible shadows flickering across her face and the implausibly pouty lips, have all been much imitated on Saturday Night Live, as well as becoming a minor industry on TikTok, where legions of JC believers pay homage to her with varying degrees of successful impersonation.

With her own, seemingly random timing, she can gouge out the bathos and pathos of a role. As the spoilt, self-obsessed 60-something Tanya, she’s the only character in White Lotus to have made it to the second season (we’re holding out hope that somehow she will appear in the third).

“I’ve always wanted to play a dolphin.” Jennifer Coolidge is a comedic treasure. pic.twitter.com/dTXvGhk2IQ

— Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) January 11, 2023

Yet for decades, Coolidge was a Hollywood also-ran, destined to play the “Friend Of” character: manicurist Paulette to Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde; girlfriend to Seinfeld and, even then, she was just one of his girlfriends. She was Evil Stepmother of Hillary Duff in Cinderella; owner of Rhapsody in White, the poodle in Best in Show.

In American Pie, a franchise she joked in her Golden Globes acceptance speech that she “milked to the bone”, she wasn’t even accorded a proper name but instead was known throughout as Stifler’s Mom, one of the original MILFs. American Pie produced sniggers all round, and, as Coolidge later quipped, “opened so many doors… to sleep with, like, 200 people”.

She never gave up though, even when a friend in the business told her: “I have a really good eye for talent. I don’t see you as someone in front of the camera.” Even when she was waitressing in New York in the 1980s, getting high on drink and cocaine and “ending up too many nights in ER”, she clung to the dream, perhaps, because as she’s since observed, she didn’t know what else, apart from acting, she could do. “Having multi-talents must be really confusing,” she says.

She got clean at 27, after she was bundled off to rehab by her parents, who she says, had worried about how she was going to cope in life ever since she was four, growing up in rural Massachusetts. “I could hear them talking about me from my bedroom. Once a year they’d drive me into Boston to be checked out by therapists... I was so in my own head.” The “could-have-been-a-victim-but-fought-back” narrative is partly why she has long been an icon for the gay community which, as ever, has been an early champion in this particular JC resurrection.

Jon Gries as Greg and Jennifer Coolidge as Tanya in season two of The White Lotus. Photo / Fabio Lovino, HBO

Perpetually single - “I’m a hopeless romantic and gullible - she says she has often talked about how tricky it is dating men who are insecure about her success: “Their perception of your life is so much bigger and better than what it really is”. Always the bridesmaid (in her career if not at actual weddings), she’s a one-woman phenomenon with killer one-liners and fantastic shoes.

If she’s had filler and the rest, so far, so Hollywood. Less commonplace are her 5ft 10 height and curves - she does not conform to the usual skinny template. What’s even more relatable is that she doesn’t seem entirely reconciled to this, despite looking like a poised goddess in the black Dolce sequined siren gown she was poured into on Tuesday (the gown was still being worked on three hours before she stepped onto the red carpet apparently).

Other labels, such as Loewe, where she sat in the front row last year, and Gucci are finally courting her. They’d be mad not to make deals with Coolidge who is both glamorous and real - and at 61, is rapidly becoming a golden number.

Ironically, for someone who’s become a banner figure for women with curves, she almost didn’t take the part in White Lotus because she felt too curvy. “I’d been eating so many vegan pizzas during Covid [she’s a vegan with a weakness for crab, caviar and camembert] and I was mentally and physically out of shape. Mike [White, writer/director of White Lotus] was like, you know that script I told you I was writing about the rich people on location? Well HBO wants to do it. And I was like to myself, “Yeah, I’m not doing that.’”

Jennifer Coolidge reprises her Legally Blonde role in the music video for Ariana Grande's Thank U, Next. Photo / Supplied

Luckily she changed her mind, which means she can continue to fund her lavish parties at her New Orleans house, which she says is haunted - it was built in 1867 and has Ionic columns. Both the food and the themes (previous ones have been Your Favourite Narcissist and Your Favourite Fraudster) are legendary.

She will clearly never have to worry about being shunned at the A-list parties any more (“I was never invited to one party on my hill and now everyone’s inviting me!” she quipped at the ceremony).

But more importantly, the rest of us can look forward to more portrayals of deeply flawed, strangely lovable female anti-heroes.

You may remember Jennifer in…

The White Lotus, 2021 and 2022

Swanning around the world’s most luxurious resorts when you’re rich, oblivious and a “very needy person”? Coolidge took the character of Tanya McQuoid and ran with it – in glittery Betsey Johnson heels.

American Pie, 1999

As “Stifler’s Mom” she played a new-age Mrs Robinson who sleeps with her son’s school friend. She only has a short scene in the original movie, but her performance was so strong that she was cast for two sequels.

Best In Show, 2000

Coolidge is comedic trophy wife Sherri Ann Cabot, and makes no attempt to hide the fact she is only with her husband for his money.

Legally Blonde, 2001

Lawyer Elle Woods shows nervous beauty salon owner Paulette Bonafonté (Coolidge) her fail-safe move to get a man’s attention: the bend and snap. The scene becomes one of the most memorable in rom-com history.

Friends, 2003

Monica’s visiting friend Amanda (Coolidge) hails from Yonkers but has picked up a fake British accent after a brief stint in England. She irritates and amazes in equal measure by bragging about her abs, and her “mobile” phone.

Thank U, Next, 2018

Coolidge credits the pop star Ariana Grande for reigniting her career, when she cast her in a 2018 music video that recreated scenes from noughties rom-coms. Legally Blonde’s Paulette is resurrected for the Snapchat generation.