Background

Ethnicity: Jennifer Coolidge is of English, German, distant Scottish and Irish descent.

Jennifer Coolidge was born on August 28, 1961, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to Gretchen (Knauff) and Paul Constant Coolidge, a plastics manufacturer. She has three siblings namely, Susannah Coolidge, Elizabeth Coolidge, and Andrew Coolidge.

Education

Jennifer Coolidge studied at Cambridge School of Weston and Norwell High School. Her yearbook quote was: "There is no sacrifice too great for man's art." Coolidge was invited to speak at Norwell High School graduation ceremony in 2002.

Later on, Coolidge attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, and earned her bachelor's degree in theatre in 1985. She moved to New York and joined the Gotham City improv group and enrolled at New York City’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Career

Jennifer Coolidge's first TV role came when she was chosen to play Jerry's girlfriend Jody on an episode on the hit sitcom Seinfeld. In 1994, Jennifer graduated to a regular role on the ABC-TV sketch comedy series, She-TV. Minor roles in low budget films such as Not of this Earth (1995), Plump Fiction (1997) and Slappy and the Stinkers (1998) followed, as well as a recurring role on Saturday Night Special - another sketch comedy series that also starred Roseanne. Jennifer played "Stupid Girl" in Showtime's TV movie Bucket of Blood, which featured Will Ferrell in a small role as "Young Man."

However, her breakout performance came in Christopher Guest's critically-acclaimed Best In Show (2000), playing a woman whose adoration for her 95-year-old husband is based upon shared love of things such as peas and soup. In 2001, Jennifer starred in the Broadway production of Claire Boothe Luce's comedy The Women and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Her rise to stardom was confirmed when she played Stifler's Mom in all three American Pie movies as well as Paulette, the innocent manicurist with an unexpected and hilarious tough side in Legally Blonde (2000) and Legally Blonde II: Red, White, and Blonde (2003) opposite Reese Witherspoon. Other film credits include Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), The Broken Hearts Club (2000), A Cinderella Story (2004,) Date Movie (2006) and American Reunion (2012). She also starred in the comedy flick Austenland (2013) and in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014). Then Coolidge made a cameo appearance in the flick Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip in 2015. She also appeared in the series Glee that year. In 2017, the American actress voiced Mary Meh in the movie The Emoji Movie. In 2018, Coolidge made an appearance in Ariana Grande's music video for her song "Thank U, Next."

Achievements

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  Jennifer Coolidge won the Florida Film Critics Circle Award for Best Ensemble Cast for A Mighty Wind (2003). Likewise, she won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Sleazebag for A Cinderella Story (2004).

Works

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• movie

  • Carolina

    (Julia Stiles (Mona Lisa Smile) and Academy Award winner S...)

    2003
  • American Dreamz

    (The new season of "American Dreamz, " the wildly popular ...)

    2006
  • Pootie Tang

    (Pootie Tang, the musician/actor/folk hero of the ghetto, ...)

    2001
  • A Good Funeral

    (Set in 1979 and told in flashback, the film follows the m...)

    2009
  • Igor

    (In a world filled with Mad Scientists and Evil Inventions...)

    2008
  • The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy

    (The Broken Hearts Club is a story about a group of men in...)

    2000
  • Best in Show

    (The tension is palpable, the excitement is mounting and t...)

    2000
  • Click

    (When a harried workaholic is given a universal remote tha...)

    2006
  • Robots

    (Genius robot inventor Rodney Copperbottom dreams of makin...)

    2005
  • A Night at the Roxbury

    (Two dim-witted brothers (Chris Kattan, Will Ferrell) drea...)

    1998
  • Bad Lieutenant : Port of Call New Orleans

    (Terence McDonagh (Oscar winner Nicolas Cage) is a drug- a...)

    2009
  • Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

    (First, he fought for the Crown, now he's fighting for the...)

    1999
  • Gentlemen Broncos

    (A loner with a passion for writing has his story ripped o...)

    2009
  • ExTerminators

    (A dark comedy about three women who meet in a Rage Therap...)

    2009
  • A Mighty Wind

    (The newest "mockumentary" from the inimitable Christopher...)

    2003
  • Date Movie

    (The twisted minds of the writers of Scary Movie skewer th...)

    2006
  • A Cinderella Story

    (Meet high school student Sam who scrubs floors at a diner...)

    2004
  • Plump Fiction

    (This hilarious spoof of such notable blockbuster films as...)

    1997
  • Trial and Error

    (Charles Tuttle is a mild-mannered attorney sent to a smal...)

    1997
  • American Wedding

    (The third film in the raucous "American Pie" series finds...)

    2003
  • American Pie 2

    (Hold the pastry - Jim and his sex-starved buddies head to...)

    2001
  • Epic Movie

    (The writers/directors of Date Movie have done it again, t...)

    2007
  • Foreign Exchange

    (Four friends think they've got it made for senior year - ...)

    2008
  • For Your Consideration

    (The film focuses on the making of an independent movie an...)

    2006
  • American Reunion

    (The whole American Pie gang returns to make their reunion...)

    2012
  • Zoolander

    (Three-time male model of the year, Derek Zoolander, is de...)

    2001
  • American Pie

    (Four horny high-school virgins set their sights on scorin...)

    1999
  • Brown's Requiem

    (A fat man hires a private eye to investigate a Hollywood ...)

    1998
  • Austenland

    (Jane Hayes's (Keri Russell) adoration of all things Jane ...)

    2013
  • Down to Earth

    (Struggling black comic Lance Barton knows what it's like ...)

    2001
  • The Emoji Movie

    (Discover the secret world inside your phone where all the...)

    2017
  • Slappy And The Stinkers

    (The Stinkers wreak havoc at summer camp when they kidnap ...)

    1998
  • Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

    (Alexander endures a hilariously terrible day in this Disn...)

    2014
  • Hell and Back

    (Remy, Augie, and Curt have been best friends since birth....)

    2015
  • Beauty and the Briefcase

    (Hilary Duff stars as Lane Daniels, a fashion journalist.)

    2010
  • Mangus!

    (Mangus Spedgwick has had one dream his whole life... He w...)

    2011
  • Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde

    (Elle Woods heads to Washington, D.C. and joins a congress...)

    2003
  • Legally Blonde

    (Elle woods has it all. She's the president of her sororit...)

    2001
  • Soul Men

    (Superstars Samuel L. Jackson and Bernie Mac are "Soul Men...)

    2008

• TV series

  • 2 Broke Girls: The Complete Series

    (Set in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New Yor...)

Politics

Jennifer Coolidge is a lifelong Democrat.

Views

Jennifer Coolidge is a supporter of charities working for AIDS assistance and animal rights.

Quotations: "Girls are supposed to be feminine and demure. Comedy isn't about that, so you just have to unlearn it. Certain women are so pretty, they can't go weird enough to be funny. You have to be willing to be ugly. I'm lucky my face can look so hideous."

"A man's ability to haggle is never a turn-on. The only thing less romantic than how much you paid is how much you saved. The last thing we want to hear is how you talked the jeweler down on our new earrings."

"When you're an actress, there are only a few times you can really get paid. One of them is doing a sequel. They can't fake you or hire another actor to play you."

"When it's going well, stand-up is the best thing in the world, but when it's not, it feels like all your toes are being pulled off one by one."

"People have this view, 'Oh, you're in movies, your life is so glamorous' but it can really suck."

Personality

Though Jennifer is now well-established as a comedy actress, things weren’t always set to be that way. Actually, she wanted to be a singer when she was a child, and this was an ambition that she harbored for a while.

Jennifer grew up thinking that performing in a band or stand-up comedy was exclusively for men. She did not even consider working in comedy until she was cast as a member of The Groundlings.

When she first started out in college and chose to study theatre, Jennifer was completely obsessed with Meryl Streep. She wanted to be just like her and become a dramatic actress, but of course, she quickly realized that her talents lay more towards the comedic side.

Jennifer started performing stand-up comedy in 2009. The end of a relationship compelled her to put together some material on relationships as a form of therapy. She got the idea to take up stand-up comedy when she was asked to host an event on Women in Film at the Beverly Hills Hotel in front of an A-list crowd. Her performance was so well received that Coolidge ended up touring the world for 2 years as a stand-up performer and visited countries such as Scotland and Australia.

Coolidge said that she is obsessed with crime shows on Investigation Discovery.

Interests

• Writers

  Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

• Artists

  Kid Orange

• Music & Bands

  Ariana Grande

Connections

Jennifer Coolidge was in a relationship with an actor named Chris Kattan who was ten years younger than her in 2001. After separating from him, Coolidge started dating another man named Banks McClintock. As of now, she is sharing her time between her two houses, one in New Orleans and another in Hollywood, California. She has no marriage plans in the coming future.

Father:

Paul Constant Coolidge

Mother:

Gretchen (Knauff) Coolidge

Sister:

Susannah Coolidge

Sister:

Elizabeth Coolidge

Brother:

Andrew Coolidge

ex-boyfriend:

Chris Kattan

ex-boyfriend:

Banks McClintock

relative:

Calvin Coolidge

Jennifer Coolidge is related to the 30th president of the United States. In an interview with George Wayne, she said: "I’m his distant cousin. In the third grade, I did a report on Calvin Coolidge, and I remember - after doing all the research - thinking that he wasn’t very impressive and that I should’ve picked Lincoln."

colleague:

Selma Blair

colleague:

Charlize Theron

colleague:

Alexander Skarsgård

colleague:

Hilary Duff

colleague:

Willem Dafoe

colleague:

Adam Sandler

colleague:

Nicolas Cage

References

• Jennifer Coolidge on Twitter
• Jennifer Coolidge on Instagram
• Jennifer Coolidge on Facebook