Actress Lisa Kudrow

Lisa Kudrow has played different roles on television, but her best known role is that of Phoebe Buffay in the long-running NBC sitcom "Friends."

Her character was based on a character she played on another NBC sitcom, "Mad About You" - Ursula Buffay, a frantic waitress.  Pheobe, a masseuse who plays guitar as a hobby and writes songs about topics such as pungently aromatic felines, is Ursula's twin sister.

Another series Ms. Kudrow is known for is "Web Therapy,"  playing Fiona Wallace, a therapist who offers snap sessions on the Internet.  It ran for four seasons on Showtime.

She's been in a few movies as well, including Long Shot, a 2019 comedy about a female Secretary of State running for President (played by Charlize Theron, an earlier honoree on this blog, and no, I won't make the obvious joke, it's too easy a shot); Ms. Kudrow played the Secretary's pollster.  Lisa Kudrow's best-known movie role, however, is 1997's Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, in which she and Mira Sorvino play two underachieving 28-year-old women who invent fake careers to impress classmates at their tenth-anniversary high-school class reunion.  (Ms. Kudrow played Michele.)  It's considered a cult classic.

Fun fact: Lisa Kudrow has a degree in biology from Vassar College.  She had planned to go to medical school and become a doctor specializing in headaches, like her father, Dr. Lee Kudrow, though she did work on her father's staff after graduation.