Lisa Kudrow



Lisa Kudrow (born July 30, 1963) is an American actress, comedienne and producer. She gained worldwide recognition for her ten season run as Phoebe Buffay in the television sitcom Friends, for which she received many accolades including an Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

She went on to produce, write and star in the short lived HBO series The Comeback, and is currently starring in Web Therapy which is in its second season on Showtime. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class - Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program for the show in 2012. She is also one of the executive producers of the NBC reality program Who Do You Think You Are. She is nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Program for the series in 2012.

Away from television, Kudrow has also appeared in many films including Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), The Opposite of Sex (1998), Analyze This (1999), Dr. Dolittle 2(2001), Happy Endings (2005), P.S. I Love You (2007), Bandslam (2008), Hotel for Dogs (2009) and Easy A (2010).

Throughout her career she has received nine Emmy Award nominations, twelve Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award nomination.

Early life
Lisa Kudrow was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Nedra S. (née Stern), a travel agent, and Dr. Lee N. Kudrow (born 1933), a headache specialist and physician. She has an older sister, Helene Marla (born 1960), and an older brother, Santa Monica neurologist David B. Kudrow (born 1957). She is the niece of composer/conductor Harold Farberman.Kudrow was raised in a middle-class Jewish family. Her ancestors emigrated from Belarus and lived in the village of Ilya, in the Minsk area, and her great-grandmother was murdered in the Holocaust.

Kudrow attended Portola Middle School in Tarzana, California. In 1979, at the age of 16, she underwent rhinoplasty to reduce the size of her nose.She graduated from Taft High School in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. She received her BA in Biology from Vassar College, intending to follow in her father's footsteps and research headaches. Kudrow worked on her father's staff for eight years while breaking into acting, earning a research credit on his study on the comparative likelihood of left-handed individuals developing cluster headaches.

Personal life
On May 27, 1995, Kudrow married Michel Stern, a French advertising executive. They have one son, Julian Murray, who was born on May 7, 1998. Kudrow's pregnancy was written into Friends (seasons 4 and 5), with her character Phoebe having triplets as a surrogate mother for her brother and his wife because they were not able to have children.