Lisa told CNN’s Piers Morgan that playing Phoebe made her a better person.
“I’m very grateful [to have played Phoebe] because… first of all, Phoebe was so light and wonderful and I was not.. until I had to inhabit her for 10 years and it really lightened me up,” she said. “And also it got me this professional independence.”
She added there are “fifty other things I'm grateful for that concerns 'Friends.' Getting to spend that much time and being close with five other actors for ten years – that's a gift. On a lot of TV shows people don't get along the whole time.
“We did in every way, we were like family, we were like our own union, businesswise. That was an extraordinary thing.”
Born in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Tarzana, Lisa, who didn’t date much, didn’t do drugs and didn’t drink, said she never felt like a normal teenager.
Classic TV Beauties 1990s Countdown
LISA KUDROW as Phoebe Buffay in "Friends"
Whether she was singing “Smelly Cat” or posing as twin sister Ursula in an attempt to fool Joey, Lisa as Phoebe was always excitable and entertaining. Phoebe was the childlike, innocent and free-spirited former street urchin among the Friends.
Phoebe was the ditsy blonde New Age folk singer-massage therapist who was street-smart and full of surprises. Being the goofball was the norm for “Pheebs: She listened to kitchen appliances (“The refrigerator told me to have a great day”) and drove her grandmother's cab and believed in Indian spirits and karma.
Describing Phoebe, Lisa told the website www.worldscreen.com: “I had played characters who were ditsy, dumb and didn’t have a lot of information, that’s how I would describe Phoebe. She doesn’t have a lot of information but is really fine with everything. She’s excited about things, and she doesn’t do anything half way. She feels very strongly about a lot of things. And she gets really mad about a lot of things, too.
“She'd get pretty petulant and a little judgmental, which was funny because the way it came out of her was judgmental.”
When “Friends” first aired in 1994 with six relative newcomers, nobody would have guessed that it would make history as groundbreaking TV. It was one of the first series to depict twenty-somethings living on their own without parental interaction.
The six “Friends” characters shared equal screen time and the actors took the approach of ensemble TV to the highest level at the negotiating table, earning equal seven-figure salaries the last season.
After finishing at No. 9 in the ratings the first season, “Friends” earned Top 5 ratings for all of the next nine seasons. It was No. 1 in 2001-2002, when ratings increased by 17% from the previous season.
“Friends” was nominated for 64 Emmys and TV Guide named it No. 21 on its list of the 50 Greatest Shows of All Time. The series won the 2002 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and was nominated five other seasons.
Lisa, who called the series “a very successful six-way relationship,” was nominated for six Emmys, winning once (1998), and she won two Screen Actor Guild awards.
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Born in the San Fernando Valley suburb of Tarzana, Lisa, who didn’t date much, didn’t do drugs and didn’t drink, said she never felt like a normal teenager.
“I used to cry almost every night. My parents would say, 'Don’t worry. College will be better!’” she said in a 2009 interview with the website www.telegraph.co.uk. “With high school, for many people, it’s just a case of trying to keep breathing and getting through it.
“I’d have felt more like a normal teenager if I had a boyfriend. But I never did. And I didn’t like any of the guys in school. In fact, they all seemed so simplistic that I really could not see myself dating any of them.”
Lisa auditioned for a spot on “Saturday Night Live” in 1990, but the role instead went to Julia Sweeney.
A natural brunette, Lisa turned blonde after she failed to earn another role.
"I'd just been fired from ‘Frasier.’ I was supposed to be in that pilot [playing Ros]. I was a little devastated, but I started exercising, walking outside and my hair got lighter, and I gradually went blonde," she said. “You’re just treated differently. You're just lighter. It literally lightens you up.
A year later, Lisa got her break on the Paul Reiser series “Mad About You” when she was hired as Ursula, the eccentric waitress whom Lisa called “definitely an idiot.
“Then ‘Friends’ came on right after 'Mad' and they had to explain why you would see the same person back to back so they made her twins,” she said. "I mostly have played dumb characters, and it's kind of a nice way to be. There's something easy about that kind of life."
During the “Friends” run, Lisa starred in several films, most notably “Romy and Michele's High School Reunion” (1997), “The Opposite of Sex” (1998), “Analyze This” (1999) and “Analzye That” (2002).
In 2005 Lisa returned to TV on the HBO series “The Comeback,” writing, producing and starring as washed-up sitcom actress Valerie Cherish. Although the series lasted only one season (13 episodes), Entertainment Weekly named it one of the ten best shows of the decade, calling it “the most brilliantly brutal satire of reality TV ever captured on screen.”
In 2012, Lisa was starring in the Showtime comedy series “Web Therapy.”
To her fans, Lisa will always be Phoebe and she said she's still often asked by fans to sing “Smelly Cat.”
“I think I'm a little better than that [Phoebe singing]. She thought she was this fantastic artsy singer! And she's not. She doesn't play that well, but that doesn't matter.”
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Always a brainy young adult, she earned a biology degree from Vassar College and had no interest in acting.
"I was interested in becoming the adult that I saw myself becoming, which was not an actor, nothing silly. I wanted something respectable, to be the kind of woman who would attract a certain kind of man that I could respect," she said. "I actually made an effort to reject acting, to shove it out of my body, because I didn't want my kids to have an actress as a mother -- to have a silly person.”
After graduation, though, she moved back to California and joined The Groundlings, an improve comedy troupe in LA.
"After I graduated it really struck me hard, I couldn't fight it any more. So I pursued it, and I got encouragement on the way, and I stuck with it."
In 1989-90, she appeared in episodes of “Cheers,” “Newhart” and “Life Goes On” while struggling to establish her career.
