Happy tears! Jennifer Coolidge got emotional during her acceptance speech at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild awards.
The Best in Show actress, 61, earned the accolade for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her portrayal of Tanya on season 2 of The White Lotus. While accepting the statue, Coolidge thanked the show’s creator, Mike White, and teared up sharing an anecdote about her parents.
“Mike White, you can give money to friends … and people like money. The best gift you can give to someone is change their perspective. And that’s what Mike White did for me,” the 2 Broke Girls alum said during the Sunday, February 26, ceremony at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
She continued: “What I really want to say is, I had these amazing parents. It was impossible for them to lie.” The Massachusetts native explained that one day, her father took her out of school after making up a fake excuse.
“I got in the car with my dad … and he said, ‘I’m never going to tell a lie again, but we’re going somewhere really cool,’” Coolidge recalled, noting that her dad then took her to see a Charlie Chaplin performance. “It’s my love of film. It’s my love of actors,” she shared.
The Legally Blonde actress donned a black floor-length, long-sleeve Saint Laurent dress and a matching headband for the occasion. Shortly after her solo win, Coolidge took the stage again with her White Lotus costars after the cast was awarded the prize for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
One month prior to her SAG Award wins, the Cinderella Story star earned her first Golden Globe award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series — Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for her work in the HBO anthology series.
“I just want you all to know that I had such big dreams and expectations as a younger person. But what happened was, you know, they get sort of fizzled by life or whatever,” the actress said while accepting the distinction in January. “I just want to say: Mike White, you have given me hope. You’ve given me a new beginning, even if this is the end, because you did kill me off. But it doesn’t matter because even if this is the end, you sort of changed my life in a million different ways. My neighbors are speaking to me, things like that.”
Coolidge also won her first-ever Emmy in September 2022 for her role on the critically-acclaimed show.
“I just want to say I took a lavender bath tonight — right before the show — and it made me swell up inside my dress and I’m having a hard time speaking. I’m not kidding,” she quipped during her acceptance speech at the time, calling her victory a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience.
