It’s a humbling moment when you realise that life’s big achievers, and even just its satisfactorily functioning grown-ups, are your age. Or younger. It is all too easy to look around and find a surplus of evidence to back up that niggling conviction that if you’ve not made it by 30, you might as well just quit. 30 Under 30 lists seem designed just to make those of us already in our fourth decade feel bad for not being a billionaire/Oscar winner/multi-disciplinary-creator-with-one-million-plus-Instagram-followers.

But, remember, the tortoise beat the hare (Forbes, by the way, also started a 50 Over 50 list in 2021). And what a fabulous cheerleader us slow starters have in Jennifer Coolidge. Last week, picking up a Golden Globe for her brilliant turn as the tragi-comic Tanya in White Lotus, the 61-year-old actor said: ‘I just want you all to know that I had such big dreams and expectations as a younger person, but what happened is they get sort of fizzled by life and whatever. I thought I was going to be Queen of Monaco even though someone else did it. But I had these giant ideas. And then you get older and, oh, shit’s going to happen’.

Hollywood stars aren’t known for being relatable, but that feeling of dreams fizzling is universal. Coolidge may have been regularly working for years (you might recognise her as Stifler’s Mom in the American Pie franchise, or a deranged handbag designer in Sex and the City. ‘Do I look like a f**king department store?’) but her moment, her turn in the spotlight, came with White Lotus.

But when dreams fizzle, what can emerge is something even better: the kind of satisfaction born of experience. The sexy, starlit Hollywood version of success is just that, one version.

Most of us will be no more likely to accept an award in front of Brad Pitt as we will be crowned Queen of Monaco, but nevertheless, we can all learn something from the effervescent Coolidge. First, keep on plugging, hang on in there. Second, later-life success can come with a deep gratitude not in spite of, but because of the graft. Coolidge thanked White Lotus creator Mike White for giving her hope. You could say she’s done the same for us. And, wow, wasn’t she worth the wait?

Laura