Jennifer Coolidge’s biggest career regret: “I was deeply depressed for a very long time”
Hollywood is a rough place for women over 40. If you’re not Meryl Streep, you’d better be content to play peripheral maternal characters or shell out vast sums of money to maintain the appearance of someone half your age. But for Jennifer Coolidge, the trajectory of stardom has been quite different.
She began her career as a stand-up comedian and moved to Los Angeles in the 1990s to join the famous improv comedy group the Groundlings. In 1999, she landed a role in American Pie, playing Stifler’s mom. The character was the original MILF, and did, in fact, have sex with a teenager on a pool table. What could easily have been a minor stepping stone to larger roles turned out to be her defining performance for the next two decades. American Pie was a surprise hit, and Stifler’s mom became a formative character for many of the movie’s fans.
For the next two decades, Coolidge struggled to distance herself from the film, falling into the trap of being typecast as the kooky blonde who could always be relied upon for comedic relief. Like many other character actors, she tended to be the best thing about every scene she appeared in, whether it was in Legally Blonde or Top Chef. But until 2021, when her longtime friend Mike White wrote a role for her in his new show, The White Lotus, she was hardly a household name.
In the first and second seasons of the show, Coolidge played Tanya McQuoid, a lonely heiress who shows up to the extravagant resort in Hawaii with her mother’s ashes in an urn and a boatload of physical and emotional baggage. She is needy, oblivious to her surroundings, often fiercely kind, but eternally and tragically self-serving. The performance made Coolidge an icon to a whole new legion of fans and has sparked a long-overdue renaissance in her career, but according to the actor herself, it shouldn’t have been necessary.
Speaking to The Times earlier this year, the White Lotus star talked about how, shortly after her role in American Pie, she enjoyed a wave of career opportunities. Stifler’s mom was a small role, but comedians recognised her talent straight away. Over the next decade, she was a regular supporting actor in films led by famous stand-ups and sketch comedy stars, including Zoolander and a trio of Christopher Guest movies — Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration.
“It was this incredible wave and my surfboard was there and I got on,” she said. “Then I got off. I sabotaged myself, and I’d say this to any young person: when the wave comes, have the guts to stay on… I was a sure bet, I got so many good jobs in a row. I have huge regrets – I was deeply depressed for a very long time.”
In an echo of Tanya McQuoid, she revealed that part of her self-sabotage involved men. “I wanted this guy that I was obsessed with. I wanted him to like me, so I went completely off-track,” she explained. “I wasted a lot of time – and that moment passes. And, God, if I could live my life over again, I wouldn’t have done what I did.”
Fortunately for the movie-going public, her self-described self-sabotage was ultimately no match for her talent. Following her role in The White Lotus, Coolidge is back in the spotlight with roles in movies like Riff Raff, A Minecraft Movie, and Legally Blonde 3, and will hopefully be a mainstay at the cinema for decades to come.
