Jennifer Coolidge is touring around Australia with Yours for the Night, her one woman show. Best known for her iconic roles as Stifler’s Mum in the American Pie movies and Paulette, the Bend and Snap manicurist in Legally Blonde, the actress is also recognizable for her many TV appearances including guest spots in Friends, Joey, Sex and the City and Seinfeld.
Coolidge is also a regular cast member in the films of Christopher Guest. Her current tour is her debut stand-up comedy performance.
OUTinPerth editor Graeme Watson had a telephone chat with Jennifer from her Sydney Hotel room and discussed the difference between MILF’s and Cougars, the ageless cast of American Pie and why Australian actors are so good.
How’s the tour been going?
I like it, I like the Australia audience, and I like the Australia period. You know, it’s very up my alley. I’ve seen a bunch of Australian movies and I’ve seen Australian television shows, but coming here it’s beyond what I was hoping for.
When you think of Australia through film and television, what are the reference points?
Well one of my favourite movies of all time is Muriel’s Wedding, and Strictly Ballroom is one of my favourite films. The Australian actors are so much better than American actors really, across the board, I think they win. Talent wise they are just so superior. I don’t know why that is actually, I really don’t. Australian films make Australia look very appealing.
And the men who ask me out here are very masculine and bold, and the gay men, they’re all that I hoped they would be. It’s strange for us when we see Australian actors in American films and all of a sudden they have American accents. It must be, but you must also think our guy is doing so much better than their guy, right. Why do you think that is?
Maybe it’s our colonial history; we have a huge in-built programming to leave Australia, travel the world and conquer. I think it comes from people wanting to return to England. It’s very much part of our culture.
Yeah it is, you have great movies and great actors. Maybe it’s just you guys have really good taste. Maybe that’s what it is.
You grew up in Norwell, Massachusetts, a town with a population of just 10,000. What was Norwell Massachusetts like?
Well it was kind of limited. I think I was the only person in my town that wanted to be an actress. I think that was a non-conformist choice in my town that just wasn’t what people chose to do.
What did everyone else become?
I don’t know, [laughing] I didn’t go to the reunion. I don’t know what they ended up doing with their lives, all I know is that I was one of those girls that really wanted to go to Hollywood and become an actress. It’s a town that is really the opposite of Hollywood, the town I grew up in is just straight forward. A very beautiful little town but nothing is sugar coated. LA couldn’t be more the opposite on every level, with the phony nouveau riche – that my little town just didn’t have.
Was Hollywood the ultimate destination, or once you got there did you find you want to go somewhere else?
Well, now I do. Now I think I’ve had my fill. I was hoping that it was a phase it was going through, this strange reality phase, with all these immensely untalented people that are immensely famous. I don’t know, it’s a phenomenon.
You talk to a lot of younger people know and ask what do you want to do and they say ‘be famous’, but that’s not a profession.
I don’t even have a problem with a young kid saying I want to be famous. If a young person is really talented and words hard I’d love for them to be famous. I’m bothered by people who are famous and I don’t know how they got famous. I mean if I’m sitting watching television with an 11 year-old girl and she asks me why Kim Kardashian is famous, well I don’t know why.
I think that’s one of the universe’s great mysteries.
I mean we’ve had actresses, stars of big movies where I’ve thought, ah… I don’t know if they’re such a great actor really, then there are people that are just kind of ridiculous.
Isn’t there something in being too good an actor, if you’re really good and inhabit the role, nobody remembers you being in the film, they just remember the character. They don’t join one role to the next role.
Well that’s interesting, but some actors like Anthony Hopkins, I certainly remember him.
Yeah, but Julia Roberts is always Julia Roberts. She is more Julia Roberts than the character.
That’s true.
I think many people don’t realise all the different roles they’ve seen you in.
I’ve been lucky enough to play the gold digger in one movie, or the horny woman in one movie and then I’ve gotten to play the loser girl in another. I was really lucky that the casting directors were able to see me in a different light. That’s kind of a fluke thing. But I do think after you do a movie where you play a gold digger or whatever it is you get a hundred other gold digger scripts on your door step. It really does happen.
It really takes a great agent; I don’t even know how people do it sometimes and get out of the pattern. I really admire people, who create their own thing, we’d all like to be Billy Bob Thornton and create Sling Blade.
Some of the roles you’ve played are very iconic; I was wondering if you’d seen the musical version of Legally Blonde?
I actually haven’t.
I was going to ask you what it was like to see someone else play the role, but you haven’t seen it.
It’s so funny you bring it up. Actually, it’s a section of my standup show, I talk about this weird phone call I got regarding coming to audition for the musical version of Legally Blonde and just talk about how weird the conversation got, you’ll have to come see the show to hear the whole story, but the phone call came and they wanted me to come and audition? All I could think of was, if I just stood on stage and farted, that would bring in more audience than someone who could sing and dance. I thought people would rather see the woman who was in the movie, it was so strange.
Do you have a favourite role?
I’d have to say Best in Show is one of my favourite experiences. We were all in Vancouver making that movie and there was that amazing group of performers that Christopher Guest performers and they’re all very funny and talented. But the greatest thing of all, it’s such a great social experience, everyone is hilarious and everyone on that set has the best stories.
Christopher Guest has some of the best stories I’ve heard in my life. He’s probably the funniest person I’ve met in my life, and then there’s Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, that’s about as good as it gets as a group to hang out with and laugh. It’s the most amazing experience you can have as an actor; I mean how many jobs do they let you come up with your own dialogue. No one lets you do that, except Christopher Guest.
When we tried to catch up with you a few months ago you were away filing the fourth installment of the American Pie series, is it the ten year reunion? Is the whole original cast there?
Yes, oh and I was so stupid, we were at this photo shoot and we’re all there and being put on these chairs for our portraits. I there was Tara Reid and Sean William Scott and Chris Klein, and kept stupidly saying to them, ‘Oh, You look so great’ and ‘Oh, you haven’t aged at all’. Then I realised those kids were like eighteen when we started and now they’re twenty eight, they shouldn’t look old. Of course they don’t look old, they’re not old yet! I was talking like it was Zsa Zsa Gabor and John Wayne going ‘You look faaaanstastic, I can’t believe you look the same, there isn’t a line in your face’, I mean they’re young kids still.
You know your Wikipedia entry describes you as the ultimate MILF, I was wondering who did you knock off to claim the title?
I think I was given an advantage because the word MILF originated so much with American Pie, I think I have an advantage. But before that, really it was Anne Bancroft.
I think the thing that made the MILF thing better than the cougar thing, or the Mrs Robinson thing, is that it really was Finch’s idea to sleep with me. It all came from the young guy. I was just sort of a woman who drank too much that took a kid up on his offer. You know, for me it’s more desirable when it’s their idea.
You’re going to be in Perth soon, are you looking forward to it?
Yes, you know my father’s been there before, my father’s ninety and he was there in World War II and he’s given me this list of people to look up when I get there to see if there if they’re still alive. He was there in 1942. I hope I’m able to find someone and report back to him.
Graeme Watson
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