Lisa Kudrow could not be further from the character she plays on the hit NBC sitcom Friends, ditzy New Age musician/masseuse/taxi driver, Phoebe Buffay. For starters, the character she plays is in her twenties, while Lisa was born July 30th, 1963, in Encino, California. While Phoebe only discovered her biological parents a couple of years ago, Lisa comes from a secure household, where she was raised in Tarzana, California.

Lisa's father Lee Kudrow is a renowned headache specialist, while her mother Nedra Kudrow is a travel agent. Although Lisa was a hard worker and studied intensely while in elementary school, she started to show an interest in acting at an early age. She would lip sync to the soundtrack form Fiddler on the Roof, pretending to be one of the musical's characters. Lisa performed her Fiddler routine in several classes, a teacher caught a glimpse of her act and was fully impressed.

After graduating from William Howard Taft High School in 1981, where Lisa played tennis on her free time, she attended Vassar College in New York where she majored in Biology. When she graduated in 1985, Lisa initially hoped to pursue a career in medical research and returned to Los Angeles to work with her father.

As luck would have it, comedian Jon Lovitz, a friend of Lisa's brother's, had just been cast on Saturday Night Live which reawakened the little girl in her who loved to act. Lovitz encouraged Lisa to audition for the improvisational-comedy troupe the Groundlings, to follow her real passion in life: performing. She was referred to a well-known improvisation teacher after having been rejected for the Groundlings, but in 1989, she finally became an official member of the Groundlings team.

After gaining experience and recognition as a member of the popular comedy troupe, Lisa landed a role in a small production called The Ladies Room. Her next move as a comedienne was on the small screen with appearances on shows such as Cheers, Coach, Newhart, Life Goes On, and The Simpsons.

In 1993, Lisa received the role that ultimately led to her Emmy winning role as Phoebe on Friends. She was cast as Ursula, the ditzy waitress on the NBC sitcom Mad About You. NBC was so impressed with her performance, that they encouraged her to audition for a more substantial part on another NBC show.

She tried out for the part of Roz on Frazier, but was turned down as the role did not suit Lisa's character. But the role of Phoebe fits Lisa like a charm, so much so that people probably think that that's how she is in real life. Phoebe Buffay is actually the twin sister of Ursula Buffay, Lisa's Mad About You character, which Lisa continued to play.

Lisa can add roles in the following movies to her resume: Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Clockwatchers, The Opposite of Sex, 1999's Analyze This, co-starring Robert De Niro, and Hanging Up, also starring the beautiful Meg Ryan

One of People Magazine's Most Beautiful Women in the World in 1997, Lisa has received a lot of recognition for her acting skills, including the Screen Actor's Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series for her role on Friends, an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for her role in The Opposite of Sex and a nomination for an American Comedy Award for her role in Analyze This. This broad recognition shows that Lisa is not typecast as the flaky girl she plays on Friends.

Lisa and her husband Michael Stern have a son Julian Murray. She can still be seen every Thursday night on Friends with her fellow beautiful cast mates, Courtney Cox and Jennifer Aniston