Lisa Kudrow

The youngest of the four children of a Jewish couple, of Belarusian origin, Lisa Kudrow was born on July 30, 1963. She showed natural grace from a young age, and was an exemplary girl who admired above all the work of her father, a doctor, with the who collaborated in a study on the relationship on headache in left-handed patients. She graduated with straight A’s in Biology from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York.

Determined to become a stand-up comedian, she joined The Groundlings, a local comedy troupe. She landed a role with points in common with her own life in an episode of the eighth season of Cheers , where she was an actress who shared the stage with the waiter played by Woody Harrelson .

Despite this debut, he could not get his head into the television medium. She applied to be one of Saturday Night Live ‘s stand-up comedians in 1990, but was outbid by Julia Sweeney . She was signed after her to play the producer Roz in Frasier , but she did not like her work, so she was fired from her during the filming of the pilot, in favor of Peri Gilpin . These vicissitudes did not affect her, she took it positively and she continued auditioning over and over again…

Her perseverance paid off when she was cast in a supporting role, the acid waitress Ursula Buffay, in the sitcom Mad About You , where Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt played a newlywed New York couple. Two fans of this fiction, Marta Kauffman and David Crane , decided to call her when they were preparing another similar production, Friends .

They wanted her to play a character exactly like Ursula, but with a sweeter nature. After Lisa Kudrow accepted, Phoebe Buffay was born, striking by the contrast between her innocence, and her confessions, in which she suggests a murky past. She also for her tenacity when she tries to make her way as a singer-songwriter, even though she lacks the necessary talent for it. Vegetarian (like Kudrow herself), new age and an active detractor of the big chain stores, the success of the character resides in the fact that viewers could easily relate her to some other acquaintance.

The series made history, reaching ten seasons, between 1994 and 2004. Lisa Kudrow received a Golden Globe nomination, and was nominated for an Emmy six times, although she only won one. The creators of  Friends turned Phoebe into fiction into Ursula’s kind twin sister, whom she played in several chapters. There was also a crossover with the original series, as the group of friends appeared in Crazy About You , entering the bar where the waitress worked.

Like the rest of the gang, Lisa Kudrow became so popular that she was immediately claimed for the movies. She starred with another blonde, Mira Sorvino , the bland comedy about two young men who attend a class reunion Romy and Michelle . She was the sister of Meg Ryan in It’s Always Here , the girlfriend of John Travolta in Winning Combination , and the wife of Billy Crystal in Dangerous Therapy and its sequel, Dangerous Therapy .

Other than Jennifer Aniston , who they’ve continued to custom-build sitcoms for over the years, none of the  Friends leads survived (professionally speaking) to the end of the series. Lisa Kudrow has had to get by with an appearance in films of a romantic nature, such as Postscript: I Love You , and Love and Other Impossible Things . But the phone rang less and less, because she was difficult to accept in new roles. “People will always recognize me as Phoebe, no matter what,” she has stated. Sounds good to me, I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. Friends was a good show, something to be proud of and it has given me many opportunities”.

On television, she has stood out as congresswoman Josephine Marcus, in various episodes of Scandal , and launched her own series, Web Teraphy , produced, written and starring by her, where she plays a therapist who consults online. It was recorded only with two web cameras, one for the doctor and the other for the patient on duty, who has sometimes been a former comrade, since both David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc have had their own chapter. “It’s like having a party and not inviting your friends. I don’t want to leave anyone out,” declared the actress, who nevertheless never managed to attract the other three, neither Matthew Perry nor Courteney Cox ., much less Aniston. The shadow of Friends is so long that in The Girl on the Train the name of her executive character had to be changed, Monica in the book, because she remembered, along with Emily Blunt ‘s , Rachel, her two friends from the sitcom.

After having an affair with Conan O’Brien, a legendary late-night television presenter, she married Michael Stern in 1995, whom she met when he visited the set of Friends . The marriage has had a son, Julian, born on May 7, 1998.