'I used to skip school to go to the movies'

Jennifer Coolidge was born on August 28 1961 to Gretchen and Paul Constant Coolidge, a plastics manufacturer and was raised in Massachusetts. During her childhood, she became enamoured with the big screen and recently admitted that it was her father allowing her to skip school to go to the cinema that inspired her to pursue a career in acting.

She said: "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."