When you’re an aspiring actor trying to make it in New York, any role is a good role. After countless hours waiting in line for cattle-call auditions, only to be told you aren’t going to be seen after all, you would take anything, any “Third Moron from the Left”, space-filler of a role. Not only would you take it, but you would agonize over your one measly line for hours, testing out different inflections and accents as you tried to milk the half-second of screen time you might get for all it’s worth. You would call your friends and relatives and tell them to watch out for you, at the end of the third scene, right before they cut away. It’s hard to imagine at times like these that there are dangerous roles out there. Roles from which you might never escape, that can follow you forever and color the rest of your career whether you like it or not. Henry Winkler will always be The Fonz. Always. And Jennifer Coolidge will always be Stifler’s Mom.
American Pie may not have been a great work of art, but it made you laugh a ton, and the one thing that seems to have lasted, more than the “band camp” jokes and the “warm apple pie” jokes, is the acronym used to describe Jennifer’s character: MILF. Short for “Mom I’d Like to F***”, if you haven’t watched a lot of sophomoric high-school movies or porn in the last decade. Speaking of which, the subsequent explosion of the MILF-porn genre is strong enough evidence that Jennifer Coolidge’s role as Stifler’s Mom was more than just a flash in the pan. “The problem I have with the whole MILF thing,” says Coolidge, “is that we’re really sort of behind the times. MILF seems like it’s this new thing, but in Europe the young kid sleeping with the older woman is not really a new concept at all. It was a friend of mine’s birthday a couple weeks ago, and after the birthday party we all went out to this late night bar, and there were some British kids in the bar, and they went berserk when they saw me, and although I danced with a lot of 21 year olds at the club, the British ones were very adamant. They worked very hard at trying to get me to go back to their hotel room. I’ll just be really honest, you know I’m single, and American Pie has gotten me a lot of fun nights.”
The thing is, fun nights or not, Jennifer Coolidge doesn’t deserve to be pigeon-holed into everlasting MILF-hood. She’s made a career out of turning what are essentially side roles into really memorable characters, the kind you find yourself talking about long after you’ve forgotten who the stars of the film were. Her performance as the air-headed dog owner Sherri Ann Ward Cabot in Best In Show is a particular favorite of mine, and one in which she showcases her facility with comedic improvisation, evidence of the training she received with legendary L.A. based improv troupe The Groundlings. She was there at the same time as Lisa Kudrow, Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri, some good company to be sure.
“Being [cast] in an improvisational movie,” says Coolidge, “is the ultimate compliment to an actor. When the dialogue is up to you, it’s pretty fun, because the best improv really comes out of not pre-planning. I’ve never planned something, and then later seen it and thought, wow, that was great. It’s always the stuff that you just come up with on the spot that’s always the best stuff. Of course when you’re about to do a Christopher Guest movie you’re full of anxiety, you know, because there’s a huge possibility that you won’t say anything funny. And you don’t know what other people are going to say so it’s incredibly entertaining, because each time you do a different take people say different stuff.”
Coolidge brings her stand-up comedy to Stardome Comedy Club this July 16-18, a show she says “is just kind of stories strung together. I talk about sex and I talk about dating, and how weird it is to be a character actress in Los Angeles. I hope people are entertained. You know, it’s kind of an unedited, dirtier show than I could ever do on film or TV.” Who knows, maybe after a night with her sultry stand-up, you’ll forget all about Jennifer Coolidge, the MILF.
Jennifer Coolidge will be at the Stardome Comedy Club from July 16-18. Tickets are $20. For more info, visit www.stardome.com.
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Originally printed in Birmingham Weekly on July 15, 2010.