Lisa Kudrow has one of the world's most famous faces thanks to her tenure in the hit series Friends. Her fame in the show has led to film offers, which have taken her away from her LA home and her 10-year-old son. That separation has been painful
Lisa Kudrow has one of the world's most famous faces thanks to her tenure in the hit series Friends. Her fame in the show has led to film offers, which have taken her away from her LA home and her 10-year-old son. That separation has been painful
Lisa Kudrow was 31 when she was invited to play the role of Phoebe Buffay in the series Friends. It was the gift that keeps on giving.
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The show's six co-stars were able to negotiate collectively and made millions on the series. Five years after they stopped filming first run shows they are being paid for syndicated episodes bought by individual television stations and networks and played literally around the clock and around the world. Kudrow could easily retire at 45 but she appears to be busier than most actors. The Internet Movie Data Base shows her appearing in six films in the coming year.
Kudrow says she took the role after working almost exclusively in independent films in order to make a movie that her 10-year-old son Julian could see. "I did it for Julian and he really liked it a lot. He said 'I've seen that behaviour.'
"He doesn't see me in movies because I like to work and the independent films are available and the studio films are not usually available to me. The tough part of doing those is that they need to save every dollar they can and almost every state but California, where we live, has a tax credit. So I have to leave him behind and that hurts."
Kudrow went to New York for 2u00bd months to make a movie and left her son and her husband Michel, a financial consultant, on their own. She says they survived without her but she had a difficult time. "They came out to see me but it was tough. My son is in school so we don't want to disrupt his life more than the fact that I am not there, which is a big enough disruption of its own. I'm fortunate that my husband is there and is very hands on. He takes him to school and does the homework.
But the biggest achievement I am ever going to have is Julian. So when I went four weeks without seeing him, when I was in New York, it was very hard. It is not even that I am completely responsible for who he turns out to be. I just don't want to interfere with him being the best version of himself."
Kudrow's work in independent films started when she was still shooting Friends. She says she knew that after playing the ditzy Phoebe and following it up with the ditzy Michele of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion she might be typecast forever. When she got a call from indie filmmaker Don Roos to co-star in The Opposite of Sex, she was surprised that he could see her in a role that was not only a break from ditzy but was the most challenging part she had ever read.
"I was surprised that he even saw me as that character since he had only seen me in Romy and Michelle... and Friends. I don't know how that happened but I do think that independent filmmakers are able to do more than Hollywood-based filmmakers in terms of surprising the audience and showing that people you thought you knew can do more than that. But I was terrified of playing the character because it was a drama in which this character was the only one who had funny lines.
"There is a difference between a character like Phoebe who exhibits funny behaviour and having lines that the audience is supposed to laugh at. But after that movie writer/directors started thinking of me for roles like that and it just went from there."
Since her life changed forever when she was hired to play Phoebe, it's not surprising that Kudrow can vividly recall the exact moment when she first realized that things might be different for her. "We were on Oprah during the first season, the six of us, and they put together this series of clips with people talking about watching the show. Oprah said 'you're a phenomenon' and we were all in shock and she said 'why are you all acting as if you didn't know?' and it was because we didn't know until that moment. When I look back at the show I think of it as only a good thing. It was everything for me."u00a0
- Courtesy Planet Syndication
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