[from W, 1999]

In 1981, when Lisa Kudrow left Southern California and headed to Vassar to begin her freshman year of college, she was in for a few surprises. Studious, responsible, and still resolutely virginal, she planned to major in Biology, the move on to a secure job in a research lab. Having spent very little time on the East Coast, she was prepared for some culture shock, but there was one thing she didn't expect: Everyone thought she was dumb.

"I was thought to be very stupid," she says, attributing the problem to her tendency to smile a lot. "I was just so happy to be there, smiling all the time. So everyone thought I was this idiot from California."

With hindsight, of course, the misunderstanding isn't so surprising, since Kudrow has made a living portraying cheerful blond dimwits: spaced out Phoebe on "Friends," dizzy Ursula on "Mad About You," and just plain moronic Michele in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. But her most acclaimed performance so far was the one that allowed her to veer furthest from type, as the uptight, whip-smart Lucia in last year's indie sleeper The Opposite of Sex. The role has already earned her the New York Film Critics Circle's best supporting actress prize and sparked talk about a possible Oscar nomination.

And of all the characters Kudrow has played, in fact, Lucia may be the only one who has the most in common with the actress herself. But as she sits in the bar at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, smoking a series of Marlboro Lights, Kudrow says it's her firm belief that intelligence is overrated.

"We don't have a good definition of intelligence," she says. "It's funny I know that the people I play come off as dumb, but when I'm them, they're not dumb. Phoebe is not stupid she's just very enthusiastic and honest, like a child." The common assumption, she points out, is that if someone is upbeat, he or she must be intellectually deficient. "you know, when you see someone who's really nice, you think, 'what an idiot! That person doesn't see how bad everything is! Smart people have come to be known as those who can see the bad things and make fun of them. I don't think that's right."

Today, at 35, Kudrow does not seem like she could ever be mistaken for a fool. She arrives for the interview alone, 10 minutes early, wearing no makeup and a simple leather blazer that looks like it's either from a thrift shop or from Jil Sander (it's from Jil Sander). Her manner is an intriguing blend of California affability and Seven Sisters reserve, enlivened by a subtle streak of dark, quirky humor. The trait that's most recognizable from Kudrow's characters is her trademark deadpan delivery: Even her husband, French-born advertising executive Michel Stern, says her jokes routinely go over his head. "it’s very hard to tell if she's joking," he says. "Most of the time I don't dare ask her. I just keep trying to figure it out by myself."

This month, moviegoers will get a glimpse of Kudrow's comic talents in Analyze This, Harold Ramis farce about a New York shrink (Billy Crystal) who reluctantly agrees to treat a neurotic mob boss (Robert De Niro). Kudrow has a small part as Crystal's fiancee, a TV reporter who's determined not to let De Niro's antics get in the way of her impending wedding. When she was offered the role last May, she initially turned it down because she had just given birth to her first child; not only were her hormones still "all a mess," but she didn't want to take newborn Julian away from home. Her agent and manager eventually changed her mind, arguing. She says that "the role is not too demanding and it's Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro. How many times do we have to say that?"

The film also gave Kudrow and unexpected brush with real-life Mafia types, since some of the minor characters were played by amateurs from the streets of Little Italy. "some of them would talk about stuff they'd done," she says. "One guy robbed banks or something. He was caught by ‘America's Most Wanted." Although Kudrow says she hadn't had any previous exposure to mob life, she believes that her paternal grandfather who died very young, after a suspicious automobile accident had lots of shady connections. "He's a big mystery in my family," she says. "He would go away for long periods of time, then come back with some money, and then leave again. My father keeps trying to figure out what he did, but his relatives won't tell him anything. They just say, ‘Oh, he was very he was good-looking. "

While Kudrow seems satisfied with her brief stint on Analyze This, the experience clearly wasn't as meaningful as The Opposite of Sex, in which many critics found her almost unrecognizable. Writer-director Don Roos, who gave Kudrow the part without asking her to read for it, said he never doubted that she could drop the flaky schtick convincingly. "She's just very skilled—and really smart," he says. On the set, Kudrow made a few spontaneous contributions to the dialog, including the line that Roos cites as the funniest in the movie. (When a gay character tell Lucia that he's decided he is actually straight because he has just slept with a woman, she responds skeptically: "Look, I went to a Bar Mitzvah once. That doesn't make me Jewish.")

During filming, says Roos, "she had me cracking up all the time. But there's also something in her that's really, really dark. In comedy, it helps when an actor has the knowledge that life is not always perfect. And Lisa does. When you look in her eyes, you don't get the feeling that life is a cabaret."

Kudrow has no shortage of painful memories to draw upon, many of them dating back to adolescence. She was the type of kid who enrolled in summer school full-time so she wouldn't have to go to the beach. Even her parents tried to get her to lighten up, but it was a lost cause. "I was very uptight, and really nervous about my sexuality," she remembers. "I decided pretty early on that I should stay a virgin until I got married. My virginity was something I had decided was very precious, something that I owned, to give away. It was an honor I was bestowing on a young man, and he had to be worthy of it." As a teenager, she also had secret thoughts about pursuing a career in acting, but she denied herself that indulgence as well. "It was one of those crazy, rigid things that I decided for the sake of my future children," she says. "I didn't want their mother to be an actor."

Kudrow relaxed a lot at Vassar, and she eventually turned to comedy after her brother's school friend Jon Lovitz joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live" and encouraged her to brave the stage. She spent several years on the improv scene in L.A., where she also took acting classes and became friendly with then-unknown Conan O'Brien. The two dated briefly---very briefly, says Kudrow. "We were just meant to be friends. But you know, when you're that close with someone, and you're both single and lonely, you feel like, maybe this should be something. So you give it a try. But for all the right reasons it didn't work, and we're still really close fiends."

In 1993, Kudrow got what appeared to be a big break: She was hired to play the character Roz on the first season of Frasier. But she never made it past the rehearsals. "I was fired," she explains. "It just wasn't working and I don't know why, because the auditions were great. But I was so nervous about it. I think I broke out in hives like a week before we went into rehearsal. And at the table reading, I felt like I didn't do a good job. So I kept thinking that they were all wondering about me, that the director thought it wasn't working out, that Kelsey Grammer thought it wasn't working out until all that became true."

Within a few months, however, Kudrow was cast as Daffy waitress Ursula on "Mad About You"; that character inspired the "Friends" creators to hire her as Ursula's twin sister, Phoebe. "Friends," of course, was phenomenally successful in its first season; later, the excessive hype as well as an acrimonious salary dispute in 1996---sparked an equally overhyped backlash that led some people to doubt whether the show would last.

"We were definitely overexposed," says Kudrow. "In the press, it was like we were the only six actors in the world." And the cast's tentative forays into film only made matters worse. Kudrow's main Hollywood effort, Romy and Michele, was by no means a disaster (it took in $29 million), but a lot of journalists were nevertheless eager to see her fail. "Depending on what they wanted their story to be about," Kudrow says, "Romy and Michele was either a hit or a big bomb: ‘another stupid ‘Friends choice. Those stupid Friends!"

Last year, Kudrow won an Emmy for her performance on "Friends," and this season thanks indirectly to the departure of Seinfeld---the show is once again TV's top-rated sitcom as well as a critical favorite. But it's still not immune to the occasional controversy. A few months ago, the six cast members reportedly felt a slighted when Warner Bros. Television sent each of them a miserly gift'a paperweight---as they were celebrating their 100th episode. Coincidentally, NBC also gave out paperweights around the same time. (Warner's eventually made good with fat year-end bonuses, sending each actor a check for $200,000.) With mock earnestness, Kudrow affirms she uses both paperweights regularly. Asked which one is nicer, she's wryly diplomatic: "Well, they're both crystal."

The six actors are due to renew their contracts again this year, and the word is they'll be pushing for a big raise. "The dangerous thing is that you come off sounding like you're not making enough money, which is not true." Kudrow says. "It's certainly enough for anyone to live on." But she points out that the show has a huge profit margin, particularly when compared with some other big sitcoms. (Each "Friends" cast member earns $100,000 per episode; on "Mad About You," by contrast, Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt's per-show take is $1 million each.) Kudrow says the actors haven't agreed on any hard-line negotiating strategy. "I don't think anyone is that passionate about what to do," she says. "The show's just really good, so we're in a good position businesswise. It's just not that big a worry."

During her downtime this spring, Kudrow will be on the set of Diane Keaton’s next directorial effort, Hanging Up, co-starring with Keaton and Meg Ryan as one of three sisters trying to make peace with a cantankerous father (Walter Matthau). Keaton, who says that the role required an accomplished comic actress, has no doubts that Kudrow can take on heavier stuff as well. "Funny people can always bridge the gap," Keaton says. "Lisa can really do a broad range of things."

Not all of Kudrow's talents, however, were initially pleasing to her husband when the two got involved in 1992. Stern, who was born and raised in Paris, remembers responding immediately to Kudrow's honesty and humor, but he was horrified by a few of her habits especially in the kitchen. "She used to love eating those slices of orange American Cheese," he says, speaking with a heavy French accent. "and she was eating too much candies. A ton of little candies---Smarties and M&M's. She used to do something just awful. She would spread all those M&M's on a piece of aluminum foil, and put them in the oven until they melted. Then she'd just take a spoon and eat them. It was absolutely disgusting! And she was really enjoying it. That was a big problem."

If Kudrow's culinary preferences have now changed, Stern still occasionally mocks her taste in clothes. "She can have good taste," he says, "but she can also be influenced by her peers and her friends. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. The problem is that she doesn't care---clothes are not that important to her. Here in California, kids aren't brought up to care about clothes, like they are in France. So I still sometimes mention when I don't like something she's wearing. I'm very particular about shoes, for example. And that's still a big problem. I haven't resolved the shoe problem at all."

When it comes to Kudrow's abilities as a mother, however, Stern turns serious, offering reverential praise. "I'm completely in awe of the way she is with our son," he says. "She just bring him so much love and attention." Kudrow is clearly fascinated by nine-month old Julian, whom she imitates with a very convincing series of facial expressions, ranging from sheer boredom to unalloyed glee. "This is going to sound corny," she says, "but when your baby is smiling or laughing there is no other joy. There just isn't."

Not that motherhood isn't without its trials. When Kudrow is taking care of her son, she often notices her neurotic tendencies reemerging. Lately, she's been obsessing about symmetry whenever she changes his diapers, and forcing the babysitter to keep an hourly log of his eating and sleeping habits.

So once again, she's trying to get herself to loosen up, even if she knows her efforts may be futile. "I'm just trying to accept that I am who I am, and Julian is who he is," she says. "And it's not going to gel all the time, because he's a completely different person.

"Hopefully, when he's older, he'll be able to forgive me."