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Lisa Kudrow Biography
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Lisa Kudrow’s father was a headache specialist. She was expected to follow his footsteps after college and return to California to work with him. However, her brother’s friend, Jon Lovitz (an alumni of Saturday Night Live) persuaded Lisa to audition for the comedy troupe, “The Groundlings”. Although Lisa Kudrow was not immediately accepted for the role due to lack of experience, she eventually won the role in 1989 after working with a renowned comedy teacher, Cynthia Szigeti.
Before Lisa Kudrow landed the winning role as Phoebe Buffay, she suffered numerous disappointments. First, she was supposed to be the radio producer Roz Doyle on the sitcom Frasier, but was replaced by Pery Gilpin before filming the first episode. Another disappointment was on the series “Mad About You”, wherein Kudrow had high hopes that her roles as Ursula would turn out into steady work. Unfortunately, this gig didn’t break through.
The next casting call was for the highly acclaimed series, Friends. When Lisa Kudrow auditioned for Phoebe Buffay’s role, the character was never written as a twin. However, Friends producers found an interesting opportunity to do a little crossover with Ursula and Phoebe. During the first season of Friends, Lisa Kudrow earned herself an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy. Since then, Kudrow had no problems searching for gigs, receiving numerous offers from advertising companies and moviemakers. However, she only accepted a few gigs, such as Got Milk? advertisements and Diet Coke campaigns. She also hosted the VH1 Honors Awards.
Lisa Kudrow, along with her fellow Friends co-stars, received a whopping $1 million per episode for the last two seasons of the hit TV series. According to the 2005 Guinness World Book of Records, the cast of Friends are the highest paid TV actors of all time.
Lisa Kudrow also starred in several big-screen films, including the comedy film “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion”, comedy drama film “Hanging Up” and Marci X. She also co-starred with Billy Crystal in the high profile comedy flick “Analyze This” and its sequel “Analyze That”. Kudrow also played serious roles in “Wonderland”, “The Opposite Sex” and “Happy Endings”.
Although Lisa Kudrow dated Conan O’Brien until 1993, she married a French advertising executive Michel Stern on Mary 27, 1995. Lisa gave birth to their son, Julian Murray, on May 7, 1998. In the Friends series, Lisa’s pregnancy was included in the script when her character Phoebe was having triplets.
