Jennifer Coolidge Says Her ‘American Pie’ Role As Stifler’s Mom Got Her Laid “Like 200” Times

Jennifer Coolidge says she has American Pie to thank for making her love life more interesting. The actress, who iconically played Stifler’s Mom in the 1999 comedy and reprised the role in the sequel, told Variety about the many benefits of taking on the part.

“You know, I got a lot of play being a MILF and I got a lot of sexual action from American Pie,” Coolidge, who covers the magazine’s latest issue, told Variety. “Just, you know what I mean, I’m just talking about — there were so many benefits to doing that movie.”

She paused before adding, “There would be like 200 people that I would never have slept with!”

While Coolidge was known for her role in the raunchy teen comedy for years, these days she’s getting more attention for her turn on HBO’s smash hit Mike White series, The White Lotus. Coolidge starred in the first season of the anthology dark comedy as heiress Tanya McQuoid, and will reprise her role in the second season (and is notably the only cast member coming back from Season 1).

Coolidge reflected on joining White Lotus while speaking with Variety, telling the outlet, “I have done one thing really right in my life. I’ve picked great friends. If Mike was never successful, and we just did White Lotus as a play in a little theater where everyone paid 10 bucks to see it, it would still be one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Because it was a killer job that no one else thought I could do.”

In an earlier conversation with her American Pie costar Natasha Lyonne, which was published in Vanity Fair in June, Coolidge said The White Lotus marked the first time she felt she was “really playing something very different” after years of taking on the same roles.

After playing Stifler’s Mom, then Sherri Ann Cabot in Best in Show and Paulette Parcelle in Legally Blonde, Coolidge felt she was in a “very long period of just repeating myself.”

“I did these jobs that I felt like locked me into a certain perception. I was in this weird bubble for a really long time,” she said, adding, “the scripts arriving at my door were lots of gold digger parts. It was a certain kind of thing that I had already done. I guess that’s what happens to us a lot unless we steer it a different way. I wish I had been more involved in the control of my career. I just sat back, I was very passive.”