How Jennifer Coolidge Finally Got the Recognition She Deserves

Life doesn’t always offer us everything on a silver platter, and sometimes we have to struggle to get the things we want. For all the successes we achieve, life has equally high falls ready for us, which are actually the challenges that make us strong. Jennifer Coolidge serves as a great example of how fame and success are 2 different things; even very successful individuals can fall straight to the ground.

She started her career with small but important roles.

Dreaming of becoming a dramatic actress like her inspiration, Meryl Streep, Coolidge found herself at a crossroads that eventually led her to become a face recognized only in comedy. She started her acting career by first appearing in the sitcom, Seinfeld. Like most actors’ early careers, she played various roles before gaining fame.

Coolidge gained popularity by taking part in the famous film, American Pie, as Stifler’s mom and as Paulette in Legally Blonde. As a comedic actor, she rarely got out of her comfort zone; almost all the characters she portrayed were slightly the same.

Despite the breakout roles, she wasn’t fully satisfied with the job she was doing. With over a decade of auditioning, nothing added up to her dreams, so she started losing hope. She was devastated and felt like there was nothing to be scared of because she was always losing.

She almost passed up on a great opportunity because of how she looked.

Coolidge wasn’t satisfied with her appearance these past couple of years. She was brutally honest in an interview as she pointed out her flaws: “I wanted to look a certain way when you’re on film ... I was not ready for this cool opportunity. It goes to show, you should always be in the best shape because you just don’t know.”

“The saddest thing about life is that you just make decisions about yourself,” she said. Her mind was playing tricks on her and when she didn’t get a good role, she always assumed that she was simply incapable of it. That was until her friend, Mike, offered her a role and she almost turned it down.

After blaming herself for making bad choices in the past, she finally decided to give this role a try. Her confidence grew back when her friend showered her with love and made her respect herself more than ever. This gave Coolidge an opportunity to return to the screen with great energy and a huge hit, The White Lotus.

Lucky people have a guardian angel on Earth called a friend, and that’s what made Coolidge who she is.

As the saying goes, you attract what you are, and after so many years playing in the shadows, she is now being chased for various projects. “People that I could never get in the door — all of a sudden they’re asking me to be part of their things!” We all have that hidden potential inside us, even when it takes a break and doesn’t come up.

Her friend’s persistence and perseverance are the main reasons for her success today. “I have done one thing really right in my life,” she shared. “I’ve picked great friends. Whatever Mike White did for me, I would wish that for every actor, even if they fail. We all want a challenge — something really scary that we might not be able to succeed at. I think we all want that opportunity.”

Sometimes we need good friends and company to awaken our potential and give us back the life we’ve been waiting to find. We are all hardworking and capable of being the best version of ourselves, even though sometimes life plays tricks on us. In the end, everything falls into place.

What “saved” you when everything was going in the opposite direction?