Lisa Kudrow

Lisa Kudrow (born July 30, 1963, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an actress who excels at applying her keen comedic timing and delivery to offbeat, eccentric characters. She rose to fame portraying the free-spirited massage therapist and coffee-shop folk musician Phoebe Buffay on the popular sitcom Friends (1994–2004). She is also known for portraying the former sitcom actress Valerie Cherish in the comedy-drama series The Comeback (2005 and 2014) and the self-centered therapist Fiona Wallice in the comedy series Web Therapy (Web series 2008–14; television series 2011–15).

Early life and education

Kudrow was the youngest child of Nedra (née Stern) Kudrow, who was a travel agent, and Lee Kudrow, who was a physician specializing in the treatment of headaches. Her parents were both from Jewish families, and, although they did not belong to a synagogue, Kudrow decided to have a bat mitzvah to honor her heritage. She attended Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California, near Los Angeles, where she played on the varsity tennis team. She graduated from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1985 with a degree in biology.

After college she returned to Los Angeles and worked with her father as a medical researcher. Actor and comedian Jon Lovitz, who was a friend of her brother’s, encouraged her to audition for the Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe the Groundlings. She studied under Groundlings improv teacher Cynthia Szigeti and became a full-fledged member of the troupe in 1989.

Career and personal life

In 1989 Kudrow started landing small roles on television shows, playing the female lead of a community play opposite bartender Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson) on the popular sitcom Cheers (1982–93). She also played minor roles (1990 and 1993) in comedian Bob Newhart’s series Newhart (1982–90) and Bob (1992–93). In 1992 she landed the recurring role of the spacey waitress Ursula Buffay (1992–99) on the sitcom Mad About You (1992–99 and 2019). She went on to portray Ursula, Phoebe’s twin sister, as a crossover character between Mad About You and Friends. In 1993 Kudrow was initially cast as radio producer Roz Doyle on the sitcom Frasier, but she was replaced by actress Peri Gilpin during the taping of the series’ pilot episode.

Her big break came in 1994 when she was cast as the lovable and eccentric Phoebe on the sitcom Friends. The series, which follows the lives of six young adults who are roommates and neighbors in New York City’s Greenwich Village, was immediately successful. In 1998 Kudrow won an Emmy Award for best supporting actress in a comedy series for her portrayal of the sweet and offbeat Phoebe. Kudrow and her fellow costars earned $1 million per episode during the show’s final two seasons, and more than 52 million viewers watched the series finale.

Concurrently with her tenure on Friends, Kudrow starred in the cult-classic comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997), the dark romantic comedy The Opposite of Sex (1998), the mafia comedy Analyze This (1999) and its sequel Analyze That (2002), and the crime drama Wonderland (2003). She also voiced the roles of Aphrodite in the animated TV series Hercules (1998–99) and Ava the Pacific western bear in the fantasy comedy film Dr. Doolittle 2 (2001).

After Friends ended its run, Kudrow starred as Valerie Cherish, a washed-up sitcom star trying to resurrect her career, in the mockumentary series The Comeback. In addition to cocreating the series, she served as a writer and an executive producer on the show. The Comeback initially ran on HBO for one season in 2005 and was revived in 2014 for a second season. In 2008 she starred as the self-interested therapist Fiona Wallice in the comedy Web series Web Therapy. The series was picked up by the Showtime network in 2011 and ran for four seasons. From 2010 to 2022 Kudrow served as the executive producer for the genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? (2010– ), an adaptation of a BBC series in which celebrities trace their ancestry. In an emotional 2010 episode, Kudrow visited the town of Ilya, Belarus, and discovered that her great-grandmother was murdered during the Holocaust.

On the small screen, Kudrow played Congresswoman Josephine Marcus (2013) in the political thriller series Scandal (2012–18), Lori-Anne Schmidt (2016–19) in the sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–19), and Maggie Naird in the workplace comedy series Space Force (2020–22). She appeared in the comedy films Neighbors (2014), its sequel Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), and Booksmart (2019). She also lent her voice to the role of the burrowing owl Wanda Pierce (2015) in the animated series BoJack Horseman (2014–20) and the poodle Honey in the animated sitcom HouseBroken (2021– ).

Kudrow married advertising executive Michel Stern in 1995, and the couple has one son. Her real-life pregnancy was incorporated into the fourth season of Friends, with her character Phoebe carrying and giving birth to triplets as a surrogate mother for her half brother, Frank Buffay, Jr., and his wife, Alice Knight.