Lisa Kudrow Pictures

Lisa V. 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.

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 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.