[from People, 5/97]

She plays ditsy Phoebe with an unerring comic cadence. Yet

Friends star Lisa Kudrow, 33, allows that her "timing is really

off when it comes to vanity. When I'm home alone, that's the

time I'm vain." Studying herself in the privacy of her Los

Angeles house, the 5'7" actress thinks her long neck "is like

the Audrey Hepburn look when I hold it up high," but after a

hard day on the set, "when I'm tired and it hangs down, I become

E.T." No sucker for expensive potions or exotic treatments,

Kudrow, who is married to French-born advertising exec Michel

Stern, swears by a $3 tube of LipSlicks lip gloss, takes nightly

bubble baths and puts her hair in "this lump on top of my head

even though it makes me look like a freak," she says. "Lisa

knows she's silly," explains director Albert Brooks, who cast

the 1985 Vassar grad in his recent comedy Mother. "It's not just

happening accidentally, so that makes her sexier. She has a

brain." Plus "beautiful green eyes" and "good priorities," adds

Robin Schiff, screenwriter of the just-released feature Romy and

Michele's High School Reunion, in which Kudrow stars opposite

Mira Sorvino. "She's somebody who is really comfortable with her

appearance."