Jennifer Coolidge should be arrested. She should be incarcerated for stealing scenes in movies and TV shows.
On the NBC sitcom Joey, she is a thief whenever she enters a room as Joey Tribbiani’s outrageously funny agent Bobbie Morganstern. She stole scenes as Stiffler’s mom in all three American Pie movies, as the manicurist Paulette opposite Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde II: Red, White and Blonde and as the trophy wife of a 95-year-old man in the cult classic Best in Show.
More recently, she swiped scenes from Hilary Duff in A Cinderella Story and from Jim Carrey in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Now, an animated version of Coolidge is stealing scenes in Robots, a family movie from the same director who brought you Ice Age.
In Robots, Coolidge plays a robot named Aunt Fanny (the name is a play on the character’s super-sized posterior), who helps a group of robots (voices supplied by Robin Williams, Ewan McGregor, Halle Berry, Greg Kinnear, Mel Brooks and Drew Carey) in a place called Robot City.
Coolidge, a 41-year-old Boston native, is not anything like the outrageous, outspoken characters she plays, although she is tall (5-feet-10), has long blond hair (it’s teased exponentially on Joey) and brandishes a pair of sexy lips (also exaggerated on TV).
Sitting in a noisy Hollywood coffee shop, Coolidge speaks in a soft voice and never stops apologizing for being late (she broke a tooth on the way to the interview).
Q. Back in high school, what did you really what to be when you grew up?
A. I had to be an actress. Unlike some of other people in this town who can do many things well, I had no backup. I didn’t have anything else I was good at. Well, that’s not true; I was really good at the clarinet.
Q. You could have been in the band.
A. Yes, but I would have been the girl in the band with too much makeup and too much cleavage. It would have gone over like a lead balloon.
Q. Were you funny in high school?
A. Not really. I was kind of weird. I was such a daydreamer and so in my own world that I could have had a fried egg sandwich on my face in the cafeteria and not know it.
Q. Did your height affect any aspect of your life back then?
A. If you’re tall with long hair, you can be toothless and go over big with the boys.
Q. After high school, did you move to New York to be a comic actress?
A. No, I moved there to be a serious actress.
Q. How did that work out for you?
A. It didn’t go very well. I told people I was an actress but I was actually a cocktail waitress. Sandra Bullock was the hostess at the same restaurant.
Q. How did you end up in Hollywood?
A. I was in an acting class and I started doing imitations of other students in the class. A friend of mine in the class suggested that I was better at comedy and perhaps should try out for the improvisation group Gotham City. I auditioned there and knew immediately that I had found my niche. A year later, I moved to L.A.
Q. How long before you earned a living as an actress?
A. My first big break was on Seinfeld (she was Jerry’s masseuse girlfriend who wouldn’t give him a massage). From then on, I earned a living. It wasn’t much of a living, but I didn’t have to work as a waitress.
Q. Did your fortunes change with Best in Show?
A. Actually, it was American Pie. All of a sudden, I was getting in doors that I couldn’t get in before. The kids all know me from American Pie.
Q. How about the adults?
A. Adults know me from Best in Show and the other Christopher Guest movies. Industry people know me from those movies. Cool people are willing to talk to me because of those movies.
Q. Where does the character on Joey come from?
A. I tried to incorporate every jerk who rejected me along the way. But I also borrowed the voice of a casting director I met once on the series Silk Stockings.
Q. How do your agents feel about this character?
A. They’re all handsome, smart and great about it. It has nothing to do with them. It has more to do with people I met early in my career. When you’re at the “D” level of show business, it’s like living in the circus.
Q. Sounds like Broadway Danny Rose.
A. Exactly. I lived in that world for years.
Q. I’m not sure many actresses would have agreed to play a character with such a big butt as Aunt Fanny.
A. I’ve made a career of taking roles that other actresses didn’t want. I have a knack for finding roles that can be funny, but I know that she’ll never be the pretty one. She’ll always be the goofy one.
