Lisa Kudrow — actress with roots in the Russian Empire
Lisa Valerie Kudrow was born in the Encino neighbourhood of Los Angeles on 30 July 1963, the youngest child of Nedra Kudrow, née Stern, a travel agent, and Lee Kudrow, a physician who specialised in headaches. Her connection to the Russian Empire runs through her father's mother.
Gertrude Kudrow, née Farberman, was born in Ilya, a small town about 66 kilometres north-west of Minsk. The imperial census of 1897 recorded 829 Jews there, more than half the population. She lived in Ilya until 1921 and then left for America; her son Lee grew up in Brooklyn.
Her mother, Mera Mordejovich, stayed in Ilya with other members of the family, and was killed there in 1942 with the town's Jews. The family in New York learned of it after the war from a cousin who had survived and came to see them while serving on the Polish liner Batory. Accounts give his name differently.
Kudrow traced this history herself in 2010, in the first season of the American version of Who Do You Think You Are?, which she produced. Records in the regional archive at Molodechno confirmed her great-grandmother's death; she visited Ilya and the site of the killings, and in Gdynia found the cousin, long believed dead, still alive.
She graduated from Vassar College and worked for a time on headache research with her father before turning to improvised comedy. After being cast in the pilot of Frasier and replaced, she played Ursula on Mad About You, and then Ursula's twin, Phoebe Buffay, on Friends from 1994 to 2004. In 1998 she became the first member of the Friends cast to win a Primetime Emmy, as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
In film she starred in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for The Opposite of Sex (1998), and appeared in Analyze This (1999). She co-created and starred in The Comeback as the fading sitcom actress Valerie Cherish, earning Emmy nominations for Lead Actress, and made Web Therapy. Who Do You Think You Are? ran from 2010 to 2022.
"Paternal grandmother Gertrude Kudrow (née Farberman) was born in Ilya, near Minsk, and left for the United States in 1921; Lee Kudrow grew up in Brooklyn."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Ilya, near Minsk (now Belarus)
Her father's mother, Gertrude Kudrow (née Farberman), was born in Ilya, a town about 66 km north-west of Minsk, and lived there until 1921, when she left for America. Kudrow traced the family's history in the first season of Who Do You Think You Are? (2010).
Grandmother Gertrude Kudrow (née Farberman), born in Ilya, a town recorded with 829 Jews in the 1897 imperial census; she emigrated in 1921. Her mother, Mera Mordejovich, remained in Ilya and was killed there in 1942.
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Ilya, near Minsk (now Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Smelly cat, smelly cat, what are they feeding you?"