[from Entertainment Weekly, 2/99]

"It was a little disappointing," says Lisa Kudrow, "but that disappointment went away fast. Also, you look at the other people who were nominated and you think, Who should I have replaced? None of them..."

Uh, excuse me, Lisa, but as Joan Cusack so eloquently put it in her Best Supporting Actress Oscar-nominated turn a couple of years back in In & Out: "Hello-o-o-o!?" Let's hear some righteous indignation! When the Oscar nominations were announced Feb. 9, the omission of Kudrow--whose role in last year's dark comedy The Opposite of Sex ranked among 1998's most revelatory performances--was a most upsetting upset in the Best Supporting Actress category. She had seemed a shoo-in: popular with her peers, an Independent Spirit nominee, and winner of the New York Film Critics Circle's Best Supporting Actress prize. If her Emmy last September hadn't been proof enough, the film critics verified what we'd been suspecting for quite some time: At age 35, Lisa Kudrow is officially our best Friend.

"She was robbed," agrees Kevin S. Bright, an executive producer and director on Friends, where Kudrow has toiled as Phoebe these past five seasons.

"Those bastards!" says Don Roos, the writer-director of The Opposite of Sex, for whom Kudrow was the first but thoroughly unpredictable choice to play the bitter middle-aged Lucia, terrorized by Christina Ricci and wooed by Lyle Lovett.

But even if the Academy is anti-sitcom--or downright un-American (Kathy Bates is the only accent-free nominee among the five supporting-actress finalists)--Kudrow has plenty of other reasons to give thanks. In the comedy Analyze This, opening March 5, Kudrow holds her own with Billy Crystal, who plays her nebbishy therapist fiancee, and Robert De Niro, as the needy mobster who foils the wedding plans. And while wrapping up this season on the hot- again Friends, she's shooting Hanging Up, a high-profile sister comedy drama written by Nora and Delia Ephron (You've Got Mail), alongside Diane Keaton (who's also directing) and Meg Ryan.

Kudrow's only problem at the moment is that her movie career has blossomed at a somewhat windswept juncture of her life. The cast of Friends have only one more season (ending in May 2000) on their contracts, but producers will make every effort to keep them on for at least a seventh season during impending renegotiations--an event that could easily fill the void left by the end of the impeachment proceedings. Kudrow's also a new mother; last May she and her husband, French advertising exec Michel Stern, had their first child, Julian (Friends writers accommodated Kudrow's pregnancy by having surrogate mom Phoebe give birth to triplets last fall). Does she worry about juggling more movies, Friends, and motherhood?

"Better to ask, 'How often are you not thinking about it?'" says Kudrow. "I worry about the future. When Julian's older and he's in school, I'm not gonna take him out because I have, like, a press junket. I kinda see myself making decisions about not doing certain things that would be far away."

Meanwhile, there's her day job. She hasn't ruled out the possibility of extending her contract on Friends--as long as the rest of the cast does. And while most of this season has hinged on the affair between Chandler and Monica (Matthew Perry and Courteney Cox), Phoebe got her own man, played by Michael Rapaport (Cop Land), on Feb. 25. "They always tell me there'll be a love interest," says Kudrow, whose previous romances on the show have been with the likes of Charlie Sheen and Steve Zahn. "Then after one episode it's all wrapped up. He goes to Russia or something. But I think this will be more than one."

"The Chandler-Monica relationship has reinvigorated the show," says Bright, "but probably next year we'll be turning more to Lisa." For support, Kudrow may have to turn to her Friends. While she's shooting Hanging Up, for example, the rest of the cast may be asked to work double shifts when she needs days off for the movie. "We did that for [David] Schwimmer when he did Six Days, Seven Nights," she says. "We're outrageously supportive of each other. It's not exactly a family, but it's very intimate." Case in point: One Friday night in January, soon after Kudrow had accepted her award from the New York critics, the cast was shooting a scene in the coffeehouse. As the taping crawled into the wee hours of the morning and fatigue set in, Matt LeBlanc--who's known among the cast as something of a klutz--knocked over a chair. This sent Kudrow and Jennifer Aniston into a giggle fit.

"I was laughing so hard I was almost crying," says Kudrow, "and Matthew Perry said, 'Watch out. When she laughs like that, awards shoot out of her ass."

Note to Oscar: Lisa Kudrow doesn't need you.