Lisa Kudrow

Biography of Lisa Kudrow

Lisa Kudrow was born on July 30, 1963 in Encino, California although she spent her entire childhood in Tarzana.

She is the daughter of Nedra S. Stern, a travel agent, and Lee N. Kudrow, a neurologist. She has a sister, Helene Marla (born 1955), and a brother, David B. Kudrow (1957).

She was raised in a middle class Jewish family. Her ancestors emigrated from Belarus, Germany, and Hungary. One of her great-grandmothers, Mera Mordejovich, was murdered during the Holocaust.

At age 16, she underwent rhinoplasty to reduce the size of her nose.

She graduated with honors in Biology from Vassar College in New York and returned to California to work with her father.

A friend of her brother auditioned her for a role in a comedy group, The Groundlings.

She appeared in episode 9 of the eighth season of Cheers playing an actress. She was cast by a radio producer, Roz Doyle, for a role on the television series Frasier, but she was fired during the filming of the pilot episode and replaced by Pery.

She had her first notable television role as Ursula Buffay, a waitress on the series Mad About You.

Thanks to her role in Friends as Phoebe, she achieved international popularity and won an Emmy Award in 1998 in the category of Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

For the big screen she worked in films such as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), The Opposite of Sex (1998), Analyze This(1999) and its sequel Analyze That (2002), Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), Wonderland (2003), Happy Endings (2005), P.S. I Love You, along with Hilary Swank (2007), Bandslam (2008), Hotel for Dogs (2009), Easy A (2010), and Neighbors (2014).

In 2011 she is a writer, producer and star of the comedy Web therapy, where she plays Fiona Wallice, a psychologist who practices through the Internet. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality-Program in 2012.

In 2020, she played Hypatia of Alexandria in The Good Place Season 4 Episode 12 and was Maggie Naird in the Netflix comedy series Space Force.

She married Michael Stern on May 27, 1995 and they were parents to Julian Murray on May 7, 1998.