Watch Jennifer Coolidge’s breakout role in ‘Seinfeld’
Jennifer Coolidge is back with a vengeance. As well as winning a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy for her role in Mike White’s The White Lotus, the actor has starred in the Academy-Award-winning film Promising Young Woman, Ryan Murphy’s The Watcher, and the latest season of American Horror Story. All of this success arrives after decades of bit-parts and minor roles, including in the legendary sitcom Seinfeld.
Born in 1961, Coolidge grew up in a working-class family in the small town of Norwell, a short drive from Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating from Emerson College in 1985 and giving up on her clarinet lessons, she moved to Los Angeles only to enrol at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She spent the next few years partying at the Palladium, waitressing alongside Sandra Bullock and consuming cocaine.
“I had such big dreams as a younger person, but they get sort of fizzled by life,” Coolidge said during her Golden Globes acceptance speech. “And then you get older and … Mike White, you’ve given me a new beginning. My neighbours are speaking to me!”
Those big dreams ranged from being the Queen of Monaco to becoming a sought-after dramatic lead with occasional appearances in comedic projects. Coolidge was 32 when she finally received her first TV credit in an episode during the fifth season of Seinfeld in 1993. The gag is that Coolidge’s character is a talented masseuse who refuses to give a massage. Seinfeld is desperate for her touch, but not in the way she’d like. While she tries to sleep with him, all he’s interested in is getting her to rub his shoulders.
The role in Seinfeld opened up a few small parts in films including A Bucket of Blood, Plump Fiction, and A Night at the Roxbury. However, none of which received much critical attention. Coolidge then landed a recurring role voicing Britanny Murphy’s teacher Luanne in King of The Hill. Her big break came when she was cast as Stifler’s Mom in the teen sex comedy American Pie, at which point she became the mature fantasy of pretty much every hormone-addled teenage boy in America. Her subsequent performance in Legally Blonde, however, made her a gay icon, something Mike White exploited to great effect in the “these gays, they’re trying to murder me” scene in The White Lotus.
Check out Jennifer Coolidge’s hilarious appearance in Seinfeld below.
