[from Jane, 11/99]

Lisa Kudrow is on a huge TV series, she's all over movies, but what do we really know about her? It took Tony Romando and a big plate of bacon to get the facts.

Driving down Sunset Boulevard, I scan the stores on the side of the road, hoping to peep a sign that reads "MAPS TO THE STARS' HOMES." My hotel check-in isn't until 4 p.m. and I've got a little extra time on my hands, so why not take a spin past George Hamilton's place? Or Robert Urich's, or Madonna's, or even Shannen Doherty's? I pull into a gas station, where a dirty little man selling maps runs up to my window. I guess I look like the type who gets off on up-close-and-personal contact with a famous person's mailbox--which I am, of course. "Is Lisa Kudrow's house on the map?" I ask. He stares at me with a blank face. Passing on the opportunity to tell him he has guacamole on his chin, I repeat my question: "Is Lisa Kudrow on the map? Kudrow...Lisa...Kudrow, you fool, the girl from Friends?" "Yes, Cujo is on the map," he assures me. "Kudrow!" I yell. "No Kato, I don't have a map of Kato." Realizing that I am indeed dumber than this man for continuing to talk to him, I toss a crumpled fiver out the window and he hands me a map. I pull out and head west toward Beverly Hills. I'm gonna see me some of them there movie-star homes.

Rolling up in front of Shannen Doherty's, it dawns on me that this whole map deal leaves a pretty actor vulnerable to some serious celebrity-infatuated psychos. Staring at Shannen's front door, hoping that she'll pop her head out to retrieve the morning paper, I catch a glimpse of myself in the driver's-side mirror. I don't look like a stalker. I do look like a moron, though, because the guac that made its way onto Map Man's face has now taken up residence on my forehead. I can't help but think that in LA, regardless of how good an actor you are, your celebrity status can be measured by two ugly factors: whether your house is on a map of the stars' homes and whether you've ever been stalked.

Sitting down to breakfast with Lisa Kudrow at the Beverly Hills Hotel a few days later, that question is still on my mind. It turns out, Lisa has had a stalkeresque experience. She says, "I generally don't get harassed like the other people on my show. But, you know, the couple times that I was being followed, I'd just drive to the police station." Once, she was on her way to get her hair done when she noticed she had a shadow. "They were just following me, and not in a clever way," she says as we both light up a smoke, smile and size up each other's teeth for tobacco stains.

The first thing you notice about Lisa is that she's unusually calm and reserved, but not in the way that someone is quiet because they're stupid and don't know how to answer a question thoughtfully, like many actors. She pauses slightly between each sentence fragment and delivers a flat punch line, like, "They followed me into the parking structure at the police station. [Pause] Took a ticket and everything. [Pause] I'm, like, in the police station." Luckily, "they" were just the paparazzi, trying to get a picture of the actress known as Phoebe from Friends and the costar of Hanging Up--a new movie about three sisters (Lisa, Meg Ryan and Diane Keaton) and their alcoholic father. Lisa plays the youngest of the three, a soap star.

Aside from being Phoebe to us, Lisa is the 36-year-old wife of French ad exec Michel Stern, and mom to Julian--a 1-and-a-half-year-old with a throwing arm that should warrant a million-dollar pitching deal with the Dodgers. She came from the Valley. Lisa was confident as a child, but even by the loosest standards, she was a card-carrying geek. In Lisa's case, geekiness paid off big-time. She didn't cut class and go to the beach like the rest of her classmates; she thought they were all idiots. Lisa wanted to do well in school. It has also been reported that she didn't lose her virginity until she was 31. And she acted out skits for her friends a sleepovers. "I was a pleaser, so I said, 'Okay... that's what I'll do.' Luckily for my parents, I was no big rebel... Now I'm hoping Julian is a pleaser, too," she says, smiling.

People who spend even a small amount of time with Lisa quickly start doing that whole "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" bit to see if she's anything like the carefree, innocent, optimist-turned-pessimist, cranky character she plays on TV. But after an hour, some scrambled eggs and enough bacon (between the two of us) to put a dent in pork-belly prices, you realize that Phoebe is more like Lisa than Lisa is like Phoebe. Throughout breakfast, she gets these sudden bursts of sincere excitement--like her character, minus the whipping blond hair. She listens to every word I say as if she actually cares about what I'm saying. And this is a quality in Hollywood that's about as rare as a natural blond (which Lisa isn't). "I know people say really trite things, but the great thing about Lisa is her curiosity," her Hanging Up costar Meg Ryan says a couple of days later. "She is a really good listener, and I think that can't be underestimated."

Earlier in the week, I sat with Lisa's mom, Nedra, and dad, Lee, during the taping of Friends' sixth-season premiere. We sat right in front of Rachel's room. You know that one wall in their apartment that you never get to see? That's where we were. Behind us in the audience sat a hundred or so of the biggest Friends fanatics ever to walk the earth. Canadians and Scots, teenyboppers and geriatrics, all anticipating the start of the show. A comedian/magician got the crowd going by showing them that night's Friends giveaways--Frisbees, pencils, and dice. The sound guy pumped music into the studio as a 40-ish female audience member--wearing a yellow dress that was see-through to the point that we could read the label on her underwear--did a Footloose-like dance in the center aisle.

Lisa's mother looked away and began to dig through her purse for mints. Her dad and I sort of looked down at our shoes. "My folks don't go a lot," Lisa says of the show tapings. "Number one, because they think it's going to disturb me, which it doesn't. But number two, because it's boring. You know--even you said you had to leave."

I sure as hell did. Never again will I curse a two-minute commercial break. The on-set visit is a grueling test of one's endurance for repetition. One take after another, from 4:30 to 10:30 p.m., and as much as I love the show, when my ass goes numb it's time for me to say goodbye to Joey Tribbiani and that dork Ross.

"Are you bored with Friends?" I ask Lisa over our awesome bacon-fest. "You know, I'm not sure," Lisa says. "The first five years, I wasn't at all. The characters have some great jokes, and I've always liked that." But now her movie career's in full swing, after a disappointingly slow start behind the other cast members.

She loves playing awful characters, like the uptight schoolteacher in The Opposite of Sex. It's the role that single-handedly bumped her past her television career right into the cold hearts of crotchety film critics around the country. It made the difference between her being a celebrity (think Yasmine Bleeth or Antonio Sabato Jr., who couldn't act their ways into a Sunny Delight commercial) and an actor. "The truth is, at first, most of the Friends stars were getting these vehicle movies, where they were the leads in romantic comedies, and I thought that just wasn't going to happen for me," Lisa says. After knocking out Clockwatchers, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion and Analyze This, Lisa's stint as a minor player was over. To top it off, after she finished making Hanging Up, she immediately signed on to costar with John Travolta in her first romantic comedy, Numbers, out next spring. All this and a family? How'd she manage that?

"It's never the right time," she says. "Even if a child is an accident and someone didn't think it was the right time, they'll look back and say, 'Oh, can you imagine life without little Schnooby?' I mean, when you have a child, you're needed more than ever in your life. It sounds so cliche, and the reason is because it's true." Conceiving took longer than she'd expected, she says: "We took a few months when I thought it would be a good time to deliver, during the show's hiatus. And after it didn't happen, we decided to wait. But I got a little nervous--what if we have a problem? And then, a year after my original desired conception date, I conceived."

"Lisa's life has worked out in every aspect," Mira Sorvino, her costar in Romy and Michele's, says. "Her baby is so damn cute. She has a child, a husband... the whole balance. And she has the sharpest sense of humor around."

Lisa works on her two scrambled eggs with scallions and parmesan cheese for a little longer, while sipping her coffee. I shovel my food in, because this is, well, exciting stuff. Also because breakfast--at the Polo Lounge, mind you--was the only game in town. "I can't chew gum and walk at the same time," Lisa says. "I would have taken you to the dog park or something, but I wouldn't have been able to take my eyes off the dog. And I can't take you to a Mommy and Me class." (Thankfully. Babies smell funny and tend to urinate a lot around me.) "Julian's starting to talk," the proud mom continues. "His first word was actually "Eddie," the name of his instructor at Mommy and Me."

This is the point in the story where a writer would tell you what Lisa's wearing. How fabulous her hair looks and how, up close, she looks nothing like she does in movies. But who cares? She's wearing clothes. If she showed up without a top on, that I would have noticed. If she were balding and wore a wig, I would mention that, too. Her appearance really means nothing, so here are a few nuggets from Lisa that you wouldn't normally read about, but are worth mentioning: The girls on the set of Friends are closer with each other than they are with the guys, though Lisa spends time with Matt LeBlanc off the set. She's afraid of scary movies because they give her nightmares. When she was planning to have a baby, she quit smoking by being hypnotized. It worked--for a couple of years, anyway. Every once in a while, Lisa likes a scotch on the rocks. She's not religious, believes in evolution and is "culturally aware." She used to be pretty uptight, but says she has changed. People get disappointed quickly when they find out that she's not as "zingy" as her character.

I don't know. I think she's zingy, even if she doesn't. "My 'zingy' is making fun of the lame jokes I do 'cause I don't really come up with anything clever," Lisa says. It's this type of bluntness and honesty that separates Lisa from the rest of the folks in her business. The celebrities. The people who probably call acting "their craft." The folks whose homes are on the map. Need I remind you, Lisa Kudrow's was not.