Jennifer Coolidge "barely knew" her own name during her SAG Awards speech.
Jennifer Coolidge could barely remember her own name during SAG Award acceptance speech
The 61-year-old star received the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her role as socialite Tanya McQuoid in 'The White Lotus' at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday (26.02.23) and reflected afterward that she had no idea what she was going to say upon accepting the accolade.
Asked if she had always planned to reveal that her dad let her skip school to go to the cinema, she told ExtraTV: "There’s a moment in your childhood that just sticks out, you know? At least for me, it was just an important moment… falling in love with Charlie Chaplin and filmmaking. I think anyone expects that, a moment to influence them for the rest of their lives… It changed everything for me. I didn’t [know I was going to say that]… I barely knew my name — I’m not kidding."
The 'Legally Blonde' star appeared tearful when she picked up the honor ahead of Elizabeth Debicki ('The Crown'), Zendaya ('Euphoria') and 'Ozark' actresses Julia Garner and Laura Linney and paid tribute to her father for igniting her love of film with a day out when she was a child.
She said: "Wow. Wow. You know... It’s been a very special year, overwhelming, 'White Lotus' and Mike White writing me a great part that went on for two seasons. HBO giving me the thumbs up to let me do it and I just wanna say, I want you all to know that I’m just so grateful. What I really wanna say is I have these amazing parents and they had this incredible gift. I think It was impossible for them to lie, they just couldn’t do it, except that my father one day the school principal came to my first grade class and said I had to be called to the office.
"I went and she said my father’s here and he said ‘Yeah Jenny we have to go’ and the principal said ‘Jennifer get well’. I didn’t know what that meant but we got in the car and my father said, 'I’m never gonna tell a lie again but we’re going somewhere really cool.' We drove to Massachusetts and it was the Charlie Chaplin film festival and I swear to god having that experience, it’s my love of film, my love of actors, all of that came from that first grade experience."
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