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‘Just friggin’ go for it:’ Jennifer Coolidge delivers rousing Emerson commencement speech
Actress Jennifer Coolidge delivered the 2025 commencement speech at Emerson College, receiving an honorary degree decades after she first attended the Boston school.
Actress Jennifer Coolidge shared a message of hope and perseverance while delivering the 2025 commencement speech at Emerson College on Sunday.
Coolidge, who studied performing arts at Emerson before dropping out to pursue a career in show business, told the crowd that standing on stage at Agganis Arena was an unbelievable honor.
“I grew up just 40 miles down the road in Norwell, Massachusetts,” Coolidge said. “If you had told the kids I grew up with that I would have the opportunity to do this, they would have laughed in your face.”
After leaving Emerson, Coolidge spent years waiting tables while performing with the Groundlings improv troupe, was rejected by “Saturday Night Live,” went to rehab, and didn’t score her first on-screen role (on an episode of “Seinfeld”) until she was 31.
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Since turning 60 in 2021, however, Coolidge earned her first two Emmys, was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, and starred in the biggest movie of 2025 to date in “A Minecraft Movie.”
Coolidge told the Emerson students that in order to achieve their dreams, they should have “insane expectations” for themselves.
“When you find the thing you want to do, I really want to highly recommend, just friggin’ go for it,” Coolidge said. “You really have to your psyche yourself up into believing absurd possibilities, and you have to believe they are not absurd.”
Calling herself “overly sensitive,” Coolidge said that for years she let every negative comment or rejected role get to her. And while Coolidge said she emerged from that period of her life stronger than before, she advised Emerson students not to listen to the haters.
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“Emerson has ignited these seemingly unobtainable possibilities for you that now can be your reality,” Coolidge said. “It is your ability to convince yourself you really can make it, because you really have to be your own champion.”
Coolidge played to the local crowd at points, adopting a stereotypical Boston accent while telling a story about how kids made fun of her for messing up an obstacle course during Field Day in elementary school.
“It really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks or says,” Coolidge said. “When it comes to the obstacle course of your life, you have to find your own path. You can’t perfectly plan it out from the beginning, and part of directing your life is just letting it unfold. So let it.”
With Coolidge joining the Class of 2025 in receiving her degree from Emerson (albeit an honorary one), the actress quoted her “Legally Blonde” co-star Reese Witherspoon to conclude the ceremony.
“To the great class of 2025, congratulations,” Coolidge concluded. “And as Elle Woods, my co-partner in crime would say, ‘We did it!'”
Watch Jennifer Coolidge’s Emerson commencement speech:
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