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Melissa McCarthy credits Jennifer Coolidge for first movie role

Melissa McCarthy has praised Jennifer Coolidge for helping kickstart her career.

While promoting her new show, Nine Perfect Strangers, the 51-year-old actress opened up about how Coolidge helped her land a role in the 1999 film Go.

"I didn't know her. I was just a student and she was a company member at the (sketch comedy company) Groundlings," the Bridesmaids star recalled. "And she contacted a casting director - I didn't know she knew I was alive - and said, 'I think you should see this girl.' And (casting director) Joseph Middleton, he's like, 'She doesn't do that ever.'"

McCarthy said that push from Coolidge helped her score her role in the film, which was her first movie and helped her join the Screen Actors Guild.

"I went in, and I got Go, which was my first movie. And then I got an agent, and I was able to join SAG, and it's all... before you ask Jennifer, she goes, 'I didn't do anything,'" she said, impersonating the actress' voice. "But she did. She went out of her way and just was really kind to me."

The Gilmore Girls star has credited the 60-year-old in the past for helping her launch her career. In a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, McCarthy passed on advice the Legally Blonde star gave her when she was first starting out.

"Jennifer Coolidge, who is one of the funniest creatures on the planet and the reason I got my first job in a movie, taught me, 'The second they stop working for you, fire them,'" she said. "Don't think, 'I don't want to be a b***h, I don't want to cause trouble.' If you paid for a bottle of water and then that person told you to just take off, you'd say, 'Give me my water. I paid for it.'"