Lisa Kudrow

Lisa Valerie Kudrow (born July 30, 1963) is an American actress.

Lisa Valerie Kudrow was born in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles on July 30, 1963, the daughter of Nedra, a travel agent, and Lee Kudrow, a doctor who specialized in treating headaches.

She has an older sister, Helene, and two brothers, David and Derrick.

She was raised in a middle-class Jewish family and had a Bat Mitzvah.

She is of Belarusian, German, Hungarian, and Polish descent.

Some of her Belarusian ancestors were from Ilya.

Almost all Jews in Ilya were murdered during the Holocaust, including Kudrow's paternal great-grandmother.

Her paternal grandmother later left Belarus for Brooklyn, where her father grew up.

Kudrow attended Portola Middle School in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles.

She graduated from Taft High School in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, which was attended at the same time by rappers Ice Cube and Eazy-E and actress Robin Wright.

She received her BA in biology from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, intending to become an expert on headaches like her father.

While breaking into acting, she worked for her father for eight years and earned a research credit on his study on the comparative likelihood of left-handed individuals developing cluster headaches.

At the urging of comedian Jon Lovitz, who was a childhood friend of her brother, Kudrow began her comedic career as a member of The Groundlings, an improv and sketch comedy school in Los Angeles.

She has credited Cynthia Szigeti, her improv teacher at The Groundlings, for changing her perspective on acting, calling her "the best thing that happened, on so many levels".

Briefly, Kudrow joined with Conan O'Brien and director Tim Hillman in the short-lived improv troupe Unexpected Company.

She was also the only regular female member of the Transformers Comedy Troupe.

She played a role in an episode of the NBC sitcom Cheers.

Kudrow initially appeared in a 1989 episode of the hit sitcom Cheers playing a character named Emily.

Prior to Friends, she appeared in at least two network-produced pilots: NBC's Just Temporary (also known as Temporarily Yours) in 1989, playing Nicole; and CBS' Close Encounters (also known as Matchmaker) in 1990, playing a Valley girl.

Kudrow was cast as Roz Doyle in Frasier, but the role was re-cast with Peri Gilpin during the taping of the pilot episode.

In the late 1990s, Kudrow starred in the cult comedy film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) and followed it with an acclaimed performance in the comedy/drama The Opposite of Sex (1998), which won her the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress and a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female.

She tried out for Saturday Night Live in 1990, but the show chose Julia Sweeney instead.

She had a recurring role as Kathy Fleisher in three episodes of season one of the Bob Newhart sitcom Bob (CBS, 1992–1993), a role she played after taking part in the series finale of Newhart's previous series Newhart.

She also starred in several episodes of the show Mad About You (1993) as Ursula, before auditioning and earning the role of Phoebe on Friends; her character on Mad About You was initially written-into the Friends storyline as Phoebe’s twin.

She rose to international fame for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the American television sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004.

The series earned her Primetime Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite, American Comedy and TV Guide awards.

Phoebe has since been named one of the greatest television characters of all time and is considered to be Kudrow's breakout role, spawning her successful film career.

Praised for her performance, Kudrow was the first Friends cast member to win an Emmy Award with her 1998 honor as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her starring role as Phoebe on Friends (NBC, 1994–2004).

Kudrow received critical acclaim for playing Phoebe.

Kudrow has also had roles in Analyze This (1999) and its sequel Analyze That (2002), Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), Bandslam (2008), Hotel for Dogs (2009), Easy A (2010), Neighbors (2014) and its sequel Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), The Girl on the Train (2016), The Boss Baby (2017), Long Shot (2019) and Booksmart (2019).

In 2000, Kudrow explained that when rehearsals started, "I knew it wasn't working. I could feel it all slipping away, and I was panicking, which only made things worse."

Her first recurring television role was Ursula Buffay, the eccentric waitress on the NBC sitcom Mad About You.

Kudrow, the oldest actor of the main cast, reprised the character of Ursula on the NBC sitcom Friends, in which she co-starred as massage therapist Phoebe Buffay, Ursula's twin sister.

She created, produced, wrote, and starred in the HBO mockumentary series The Comeback, which initially lasted for one season in 2005 but was revived for a critically acclaimed second and final season in 2014.

She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for both seasons.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records (2005), Kudrow and co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox became the highest paid TV actresses of all time, earning $1 million per episode for the ninth and tenth seasons of Friends.

In 2007, Kudrow received praise for her starring role in the film Kabluey and appeared in the critically panned box office hit film P.S. I Love You.

She produced and starred in the Showtime program Web Therapy (2011–2015), which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.

She is a producer on the TLC/NBC reality program Who Do You Think You Are, which has been nominated for an Primetime Emmy Award five times.

She currently is a voice actress on the animated series HouseBroken.