'I haven’t found the love of my life': Jennifer Coolidge gets candid after Golden Globes win
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: When Jennifer Coolidge accepted her Golden Globe award on the night of January 10, she never anticipated crying quite so much. “I was surprised at how I spilled my guts!” she told Page Six. “I was standing in front of that crowd and I forgot where I was. I was saying a lot of my feelings. I wasn’t trying to be funny — I was being serious.”
Standing ovations greeted the 61-year-old actress as she accepted her award for Supporting Actress in a Limited Series/Anthology for her scene-stealing performance as the lovelorn rich heiress, Tanya McQuoid, in the HBO sensation 'The White Lotus'. In her speech, Coolidge said that life had "fizzled" her early aspirations of fame and that she had relied on tiny gigs from friends over the years, including 'Legally Blonde' co-star Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Murphy.
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Mike White, the author and director of 'The White Lotus', and a personal friend of Coolidge's broke down in tears as she described how she almost didn't sign up for the performance after falling into a melancholy during the epidemic. “I almost turned it down, very stupidly”, she admitted about the role on the show, which also won her an Emmy in 2022.
Even though co-star Eugene Levy of 'Best in Show' and Arianna Grande have referred to her as "My Queen," Coolidge told Page Six that she doesn't truly think so highly of herself. “I’ve been around forever, since I was 30 — that’s a long time,” she said. “But when I go to a party with my other actor friends, I don’t know any of the people. I live a secluded life in New Orleans and I only know the people I meet on the job and my friends from The Groundlings," as per Page Six.
When asked why she doesn’t seem to have as much love for herself as all her fans do, she replied, “Oh, I don’t know. I mean, my dating life, I’ve never found anyone quite right for myself. I haven’t found the love of my life.”
“I think I made some bad decisions. It makes you insecure and you don’t think you’re great,” Coolidge added. “Many people can come up to you at the airport … people come up when they have nothing else to do, they say very nice things to you, and people in Hollywood come up and say ‘You’re great,’ but the only way you know they mean it is if you give you a job," as per the interview.
White, who also wrote the film 'School of Rock' and won the Golden Globe for Best Limited Series, said to the audience at the Beverly Hilton, “We went out with a show we wanted to do with Jennifer, and everybody passed. I know you all passed, you all passed on this show. So yes, it’s very gratifying to have this moment.”
“Mike was pushing and trying to sell it and no one was buying it,” Coolidge recalled of 'The White Lotus'. The 5-foot-10 blonde, who rose to fame as the original MILF, Stifler's Mom, in the 'American Pie' franchise, was taken aback when White told his friend he had written Tanya's part specifically for Coolidge.
When Coolidge was "at an all-time low" in 2017, she recalled, how White took her on a safari in Africa, which she later described as a "life-changing experience." “Mike said ‘Jennifer, I love you, I’m taking you to Africa,'” she recounted. “I didn’t believe it for one second. It was so generous of him and I really got to know him on that trip, even though I’d known him for many years. You really find out who someone is when you’re smack next together in a tent on the Serengeti. And he’s someone who really gives a damn about this world and how it’s going," as per the outlet.