Lisa V. Kudrow[According to the State of California. California Birth Index, 1905-1995. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California. Searchable at www.familytreelegends.com/records/39461?c=search&first=lisa&last=kudrow] (born July 30, 1963) is an American actress, best known for her role as
Phoebe Buffay in the television
sitcom Friends. Throughout her career she has received many accolades for her work in film and television including an
Emmy Award and two
Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Early life
Lisa V. Kudrow was born in
Encino, California, the daughter of Nedra S. (
née Stern), a travel agent, and Dr Lee N. Kudrow (born
1933), a headache specialist and physician.
She was raised in an upper-middle-class
Jewish family
and has an older sister, Helene Marla (born
1960), and an older brother, neurologist David B. Kudrow (born
1957). She is the niece of composer/conductor
Harold Farberman. She took guitar lessons as a child and is
left-handed. In 1979 at the age of 16 she had a
rhinoplasty[www.imdb.com/news/ni0060919/] stating she previously had a "hook nose" and the new version was "considerably smaller".
After attending
Portola Middle School in
Tarzana, California, she graduated from
Taft High School in
Woodland Hills, California. She received her
B.S. 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.
