Lisa Kudrow played Congresswoman Josephine Marcus in the third season of ABC's Scandal.
About[]
Lisa is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. She is best known for her main role Phoebe Buffay and Ursula Buffay on the NBC hit comedy series Friends.
Personal Background[]
She is the daughter of Nedra Stern, a travel agent, and Dr. Lee N. Kudrow, a headache specialist and physician. She has an older sister, Helene Marla (born 1960), and an older brother, David B. Kudrow (born 1957), a neurologist in Santa Monica. Lisa was raised in a middle-class Jewish family; her ancestors emigrated from Belarus and lived in the village of Ilya, in Minsk area; sadly her great-grandmother was murdered in the Holocaust.
Lisa attended Portola Middle School in Tarzana, California. She graduated from Taft High School in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. With the intentions to follow in her father's footsteps to research headaches she received her B.S. in Psychology from Vassar College. She worked with her father for eight years while breaking into acting. She got inspired to perform by one of her brother's friends, comedian Jon Lovitz. And so her acting and comedy career began.
In 1995 on May 27, Lisa married Michael Stern, a French advertising executive. They welcomed their son, Julian Murray, into the world on May 7, 1998. Her pregnancy was written into Friends for seasons 4 and 5. Her character Phoebe was a surrogate mother for her brother and his wife's triplets.
Career[]
Lisa has received worldwide recognition for her 10-year-run as Phoebe Buffay on NBC's sitcom Friends. She received many accolades for the performance of her, including an Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
After the end of a decade on the hit show she went on to produce, write and star in the short-lived HBO series, The Comeback. She is currently starring, writing and producing on the Showtime series Web Therapy which is in it's third season. Her writing and producing partner for the show is Scandal's supporting cast member Dan Bucatinsky (plays James Novak).
Kudrow starred as protagonist Valerie Cherish on the single-season HBO series The Comeback (premiered June 5, 2005), about a has-been sitcom star trying for a comeback. She also served as co-creator, writer, and executive producer. The series was cancelled by HBO before being renewed for a second season nearly a decade after being originally cancelled. Kudrow received two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on The Comeback.
Kudrow serves as the executive producer for the American version of the UK television series Who Do You Think You Are?, in which celebrities trace their family trees. The subjects of the first series included Kudrow herself, in which it was discovered her great-grandmother died in the Holocaust.
Kudrow co-created an improvised comedy web series, Web Therapy on Lstudio.com. The improv series, which launched online in 2008, has earned several Webby nominations and one Outstanding Comedic Performance Webby for Kudrow, who plays therapist of unspecified credentials Fiona Wallice. She offers her patients three-minute sessions over iChat. In July 2011, a reformatted, half-hour version of the show premiered on Showtime, before being cancelled in 2015 after four seasons. Kudrow has guest starred on multiple television series such as Cougar Town, BoJack Horseman, Angie Tribeca, and Scandal.
Following Friends, Kudrow has also appeared in films such as Easy A, Hotel for Dogs, Happy Endings, and Neighbors. In 2016, she reprised her role as Carol Gladstone in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, and co-starred in the thriller film The Girl on the Train. She also voice acted in 2017 animation movie The Boss Baby.
Trivia[]
- Chosen by "People" magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the Word for 1997.
- On the day she gave birth to her son, Julian, NBC aired the season finale of Friends - "The One With Ross' Wedding Parts 1 & 2." She sent these episodes as her Emmy tape submission and subsequently won the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Emmy.
- Lisa was the tallest female cast member of Friends.
- She and Jennifer Aniston both auditioned for regular cast member spots on Saturday Night Live prior to their success on Friends.
- Teri Garr has played her mother twice: in the film Kabluey (2007) and on Friends.
- Out of the six Friends cast members she was the first to win an Emmy Award for her performance; she was also the nominated for an Emmy Award more times than any of her other cast members.
- Like her character on Friends she is a vegetarian.