Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Kudrow is an actor, born 1963.
Kudrow reached Friends the long way round, through a single 1989 episode of Cheers and then a recurring role as Ursula on Mad About You, a character later written into Friends as Phoebe's twin. Phoebe Buffay ran for ten years from 1994 and brought the Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild award, and it has been filed ever since under ditz, which misreads the performance badly.
Watch it again and the striking thing is that Phoebe is never confused. She runs on a completely coherent internal logic, and she is the only one of the six who never apologises for who she is. Kudrow plays her without a hint of asking to be liked, which is exactly why the character survives a decade of sitcom mechanics.
The interesting career is what she did with the leverage. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and The Opposite of Sex arrived within a year of each other in the late 1990s, the second bringing the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Supporting Actress, and both showed a mean streak the sitcom never used. Then The Comeback, which she created, wrote and produced, built a comedy around professional humiliation and refused to let the audience feel superior to its subject. It is the best thing she has done and the hardest to watch.
Since then she has been reliably good in support: Easy A, Neighbors, Booksmart, Long Shot, Wanda on BoJack Horseman, Maggie Naird in Space Force, plus recent leads in Time Bandits and No Good Deed.
Movies (40)
- The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021)
- Easy A (2010)
- Neighbors (2014)
- The Girl on the Train (2016)
- P.S. I Love You (2007)
- Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)
- Booksmart (2019)
- The Boss Baby (2017)
- Powder Blue (2009)
- Long Shot (2019)
- Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)
- Analyze This (1999)
- Hotel for Dogs (2009)
- Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001)
- Analyze That (2002)
- Friends: The Reunion (2021)
- Table 19 (2017)
- Wonderland (2003)
- Hanging Up (2000)
- Lucky Numbers (2000)
- Like a Boss (2020)
- Paper Man (2009)
- Happy Endings (2005)
- The Parenting (2025)
- Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love (2023)
- Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy (2025)
- Taylor Swift: The 1989 World Tour - Live (2015)
- Clockwatchers (1997)
- Mother (1996)
- Kabluey (2007)
TV (28)
- Friends (1994)
- The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005)
- BoJack Horseman (2014)
- Mad About You (1992)
- 25 Words or Less (2018)
- Space Force (2020)
- The Megan Mullally Show (2006)
- Blue's Clues (1996)
- No Good Deed (2024)
- The Comeback (2005)
- The Comeback (2005)
- Who Do You Think You Are? (2010)
- Web Therapy (2008)
- Web Therapy (2008)
- Hollywood Game Night (2013)
- Time Bandits (2024)
- Father of the Pride (2004)
- Web Therapy (2011)
- Web Therapy (2011)
- Celebrity Name Game (2014)
- Celebrity IOU (2020)
- HouseBroken (2021)
- Bob (1992)
- The Arsenio Hall Show (2013)
- Variety & CNN Actors on Actors (2025)
- The Actor Awards Presented by SAG-AFTRA (1995)
- Feel Good (2020)
- Human Discoveries (2019)
Where to start with Lisa Kudrow
Friends needs no directions, so use it as a control. Watch a few Phoebe scenes and notice that she never plays confusion, only conviction.
The real recommendation is The Comeback: a comedy about a fading sitcom actress who agrees to be filmed being humiliated, well ahead of its time in 2005, and Kudrow gives it a dignity that makes it almost unbearable. Two seasons, nearly a decade apart, both worth it.
Among the films, The Opposite of Sex is the nastiest and the best, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion the most quotable, and Clockwatchers a small dry office picture worth digging up. Easy A and Booksmart are the sharp supporting turns from the later run, and BoJack Horseman uses her voice for something genuinely sad.
Playing dim without condescending
Her signature and the reason Phoebe worked: characters who are not stupid so much as operating on their own internal logic, played completely straight. Romy and Michele is the purest version and it never once looks down at them.
The dramatic work people miss
The films where the comic timing is used against you. The Opposite of Sex and Clockwatchers are both from the late nineties and both far bleaker than her television reputation suggests, and Wonderland is the darkest thing here.
Her own shows, and the voice work
The projects she created or drove, plus the animation. The Comeback is the sharpest thing she has made and was years ahead of the reality-television satire that followed it. Wanda in BoJack Horseman is the saddest voice performance on the list.