Lisa Kudrow has had a successful career in both television and film, but most of us probably identify her with the character she played for ten years on the hit sitcom “Friends”. And as far as she’s concerned, that’s just fine, because it seems to be helping a younger generation.

Kudrow recently talked about her character and how girls are looking to Phoebe as an inspiration because they’re a little different. The 50-year old actress says she had a hard time in junior high after her two best friends turned mean-girl and dumped her, which eventually helped her when she needed to prepare for her role on “Friends”.

“It was just mean.” she said. “And all of junior high felt upside down to me. It was not, like, the nice people who were popular; it wasn’t the most entertaining people — it was the meanest people who were popular.”

As for Phoebe, Kudrow says she may have been a little different, but she was trying to make the best out of situations that would drag anyone else down, and young people can identify with that.

“She was basically a ditzy girl who lived in a happier reality than everybody else, because everything was so gloomy around her. That’s what I decided,” Kudrow said. “And she was fearless and unapologetic. Now on Twitter or Facebook I see young girls saying, ‘I identify with Phoebe because I’m different too.’ That’s nice, to think that people who don’t feel they fit in perfectly well can relate to that character.”

That attitude may have come from Kudrow’s own towards life; she says that even though she had to face a lot of rejection when she was first starting out in Hollywood, she chose not to look at it in a bad light.

“Every audition you don’t do well in, the job you didn’t get, you get into trouble when you start looking at it as failure. I try to be happy for everything that happens, the good and the bad. Otherwise I wouldn’t be right here,” she said.

Image: Wikimedia Commons