Jennifer Coolidge is beloved for her comedy prowess ― but sadly she doesn’t seem to love herself as much as her fans do.
The “White Lotus” star, who recently won a Critics Choice Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her performance as Tanya McQuoid in the hit series, said that she doesn’t feel at home in Hollywood despite her lengthy acting career.
“I’ve been around forever, since I was 30 — that’s a long time,” she told Page Six last week. “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.”
Asked why she doesn’t hold herself in as high regard as her fans hold her, Coolidge cited her dating life.
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, my dating life, I’ve never found anyone quite right for myself,” she said. “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,” she continued, adding that, though people in Hollywood sometimes told her they liked her work, “the only way you know they mean it is if [they] give you a job.”
The actor, who is experiencing what some fans are calling her career “Jenaissance” amid an award season sweep, was equally self-deprecating during recent headline-making acceptance speeches. At the Globes, she spoke about having big dreams that “fizzled” with age and thanked “White Lotus” creator Mike White for giving her a new beginning. At the Critics Choice Awards, she sent a message to people “who’d given up hope”: “It’s not over ’til it’s over. It’s not over ’til your dead.”
Though Coolidge spoke about scrambling for “little jobs” to keep her going in Hollywood over the decades, to her fans, she’s always been an icon, with memorable performances as Stifler’s mom in “American Pie” and as the much-loved bend-and-snapping Paulette in “Legally Blonde.”