An actress, around 40, on television, that's where you get the most torture, I think.
As a parent, I'm concerned that there are so many young, young kids-like 12 years old-that are starting to have sex.
Before I became an actress, I used to think, 'When I get famous, there's so much love for you. And I think that's what everyone's after with trying to achieve celebrity.
Blonde is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy.
Christina Ricci is amazing, the most professional actor I think I've ever met. You can be chatting with her and when they call action, she's right there.
Everything but Shakespeare. That's a huge amount of work.
For me it was just, No, I'm saving myself. I have to make myself worthy of the kind of man I have in mind.
Friends' producers have always been really generous about accommodating the schedule, and they don't have to do that. No show ever has to do that, because they own you.
How ambitious does a person have to be?
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, like, a silly person.
I decided early on that I don't know anything about movies. I was just learning about TV.
I do like reality shows, and I watch some of them because they're high drama. It's also just fun to watch people have honest reactions.
I feel like I've always had opportunities, and I don't feel like the show has ever kept me from doing anything.
I fell apart. Jennifer was there. Just had a little, Wow, this is really over, moment.
I felt that, as unreasonably loved as we were, we were also unreasonably despised at some point. Especially with the movie stuff.
I found the right man, got married, and just had to keep not reinventing myself, just deciding that it doesn't matter what you are if you are a good person.
I get so embarrassed about the money stuff. Because it's an outrageous amount of money, it's more than most people will ever make, and it's hard to come off as anything but greedy. And if you ever feel like you're entitled to it, you know? It doesn't work to keep excusing yourself.
I had a really good experience with the Groundlings. I learned so much from improvisation.
I had been thinking about doing a show about a woman, an actress who was desperate to be back in the limelight after a 10-year absence.
I had friends, and they didn't think I was weird. I wasn't the first person they ran to when they decided to sleep with their boyfriends, or try a drug. But I had a normal level of popularity.
I have no affectation when I speak.
I have trouble describing characters because there is just too much going on in human beings.
I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.
I love what I do and I wanted to try writing, so that was also the opportunity with The Comeback and to write with Michael Patrick King.
I mostly have played dumb characters up until recently, and it's kind of a nice way to be. There's something easy about that kind of life.
I started watching reality shows and being horrified at people signing up to be humiliated in front of the entire country.
I thought, I'll do good work, and I'll get published, and my kids'll be real proud of me.
I understood what it is to be so afraid of sex, of your sexuality.
I wanted to be the kind of woman who would attract a certain kind of man that I could respect. That was my thinking. It had to do with the kind of couple I would be a part of.
I was fascinated that a woman who is disgusted by what her husband does and who he's become won't divorce him. That was interesting to me.
I was interested in becoming the adult that I saw myself becoming, which was not an actor, nothing silly.
I wasn't a typical teenager at all. Maybe a little. I went through a phase, but it wasn't me, so it didn't last long.
I'd just been fired from Frasier. I was a little devastated, but I started exercising, taking care of myself, walking outside.
I'd played dumbasses a lot. On Mad About You, I played a very dumb waitress and they saw me.
I'll accept being Phoebe to people for a while longer, given how much fun it was. That's totally fair.
I'll focus on film. If there's anything interesting that fits like this did for me then, sure.
I'm not going to pretend that I know what's going to be the script for me.
I'm not one of those people who can do three things at the same time.
I'm playing a character named Valerie Cherish, who has long red hair, and the style hasn't changed since about '85, when she first got it cut and colored that way.
I'm pretty middle-of-the-road. There are some issues I'm more conservative on.
I'm the youngest in my family, and everyone is very funny, and I was always trying to keep up with them. I just loved making people laugh.
I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. I'm worth more than that.
I've learned you can make a mistake and the whole world doesn't end. I had to learn to allow myself to make a mistake without becoming defensive and unforgiving.
If the writing's not as good, I know the writers won't be eager to continue, and if any of the actors don't feel like doing it, the rest of us would also reconsider. It's just so hugely collaborative.
If we were smart, we would've maybe gotten a smaller house and put some away.
In college I castrated 21 rats, and I got pretty good at it.
In Happy Endings, I liked how human the people were, how flawed. They're just trying to survive in a complicated world.
In this business, the insane world that is television, and the insane amounts of money that television generates, has started a series of articles which say we are grossly underpaid.
It was made perfectly clear to me in the script who Sharon was, and then I got to meet her, and she confirmed it.
It was the best experience, an unusually good one in TV. We all got along. The producers were great. I was extraordinarily lucky.
It was very exciting for me, to have never written anything before and for Michael Patrick King to say, this is great.
It's very easy to get caught up and think that how many hits you get in a magazine because you were seen out somewhere has anything to do with a director's opinion of you.
My character is uptight and annoying. I play the best friend of Martin Donovan, who's a gay teacher.
My father was a headache specialist.
My hair got lighter, and I gradually went blonde. I liked it. Had more fun. But my image of myself in my head is this dark-haired person.
None of us knew how much press we were supposed to do. It was part of the job.
On network TV, I'm still Phoebe to people, and it would be hard to convince them otherwise in the bright lights of a sitcom.
One fantasy is that I just do a Don Roos movie every year if that's possible. If he'd have me.
Shirley MacLaine said, You're so funny, then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see. I thought I was going to pass out.
Since I had the baby I can't tolerate anything violent or sad, I saw the Matrix and I had my eyes closed through a lot of it, though I didn't need to. I would peek, and then think, oh OK, I can see that.
The character needs to have a really great body and stuff, and I'm not right for it right now with the pregnancy.
The first instinct of anyone on a scripted show is, Oh I know that's coming up.
The goal of the reality show is to create as humiliating a picture as possible.
The show says that reproduction is a serious business, that everything has consequences and you can't know how you would behave in a situation until you're in it.
The studio was saying, We need to do this, but we were really thinking, Do we really need to do this? I was not one of the real savvy ones.
There are things in our pilot that we thought we'd have to explain, and it turns out people know reality shows so well that they get it.
There was a time when I thought going out was so fun. You go to the awards shows, especially the Golden Globes, but suddenly that's not a priority anymore.
They're certainly paying you enough to be there.
To be able to let you know who someone is in just a couple of words, I'd have to pick the most pronounced features of a character's personality.
TV, that's a tough thing to do. It's hard to be a success on TV.
Watching a person lose their dignity used to be uncomfortable, and now it's an expected part of the program that we're becoming comfortable with.
We have to make it look spontaneous, reality TV spontaneous. We have to make it look like someone is speaking off-the-cuff.
We treat sex so casually and use it for everything but what it is-which is ultimately making another human being with thoughts and feelings and rights.
We wanted to do a woman on a reality show because that's what's happening right now-it's part of our culture.
We were called greedy bastards when we got this deal, but these other people are getting six times that. So we're not like what they call jet rich.
With The Opposite of Sex, I loved the script, and I didn't care how big or small the part was: I wanted to be part of it. It was the same with Wonderland.
You become a celebrity, not because of your work or what you do, but because you have no privacy.
You get trapped in your head. And the way you present it to people reinforces the misconception you have about whatever the problem is.
You just have to be confident and you might be wrong, but sell it anyway.
You're always asked if you have anything in common with the character, and the answer is, yeah, I do.
You're just treated differently as a blonde. You're just lighter.
While starring on Friends, Lisa appeared in 2 public service announcements for NBC's The More You Know. Her topics were sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy.
Lisa enjoyed playing tennis in high school.
Lisa was casted for the role of playing Roz Doyle on Frasier, but the producers and writers had to change the character too much to fit Lisa's personality, So they decided it would be better to recast the role.
Lisa and Jennifer Aniston both auditioned for regular cast member spots on Saturday Night Live, prior to their success on Friends.
Lisa was chosen by "People" magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1997.
She was nominated for an Emmy in 2000 but lost to Megan Mullaly.
Lisa was nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy Series in 2006 for her role in The Comeback.
Lisa's character on Friends, Phoebe, was the only character who had never actually dated one of the other five regular characters on the show.
Lisa has struck a deal to develop program ideas for US television network NBC, with her partner, producer Dan Bucatinsky.
Lisa is 5'11" in height.
Lisa's parents are Nedra, who is a travel agent and Lee, who is a physician.
One of Lisa's favorite vacation spot is San Francisco. "The lights of the city are breathtaking at night," she says. "With the fog and the beautiful views, it's a great place to play."
Lisa once dated Conan O'Brian.
Lisa was convinced to quit her job as a medical researcher to become a full time actress by Jon Lovitz.
Lisa was the oldest of the Friends gang.
Lisa is actually a brunette but she dyed it blonde for Friends.
Lisa was being considered for the role of 'Samantha' in the movie version of Bewitched.
Lisa married Michael Stern, an advertising executive, on May 27, 1995.
You can share a link to this page with your friend!