Lisa Edelstein

Lisa Edelstein (/ˈliːsə ˈɛdəlstiːn/; born May 21, 1966) is an American actress and playwright best known for playing Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the Fox medical drama series House. Since 2014, she stars as Abby McCarthy in the Bravo series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce.

Early life Edelstein was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Bonnie and Alvin Edelstein. Her father is a pediatrician at Chilton Memorial Hospital (since retired). Her mother is a retired social worker. The youngest of three children in a Jewish family, she was raised in Wayne, New Jersey, and attended Wayne Valley High School, graduating in 1984.

At 16, Edelstein was a cheerleader for Donald Trump's New Jersey Generals. Edelstein encountered trouble when she organized a protest because the team was forcing the cheerleaders to stand in bars while wearing their uniforms. Edelstein said she felt they were treated "like hookers" and organized a cheerleader walkout.

She moved to New York City at the age of 18 to study theatre at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. While living in New York, she became involved in the club scene (known there only as "Lisa E") and caused enough of a stir in the community to be dubbed New York City's "Queen of the Night" by writer and fellow celebutante James St. James, who briefly refers to Edelstein in his 1999 book Disco Bloodbath.

Actress After being dubbed a "celebutante" by The New York Times magazine during her club kid days, Edelstein used her new-found celebrity to write, compose and star in an original musical called Positive Me in response to the growing AIDS crisis of the 1980s. The play, performed at the La MaMa theatre in New York City, received many accolades. After a regrettable experience hosting Awake on the Wild Side for MTV in 1990, she appeared for a few seconds as a backstage make-up artist in the Jim Morrison biography The Doors followed by guest roles on several popular comedies, including Mad About You, Wings, and The Larry Sanders Show. On Sports Night, she played a sports reporter who claimed to be a former lover of Josh Charles's character whom he did not remember. On Seinfeld, she played George Costanza's frustrated girlfriend, the "Risotto Girl" (the only girlfriend of George's to appear in multiple episodes other than Susan Ross).

Bigger roles in TV dramas soon followed, among them the lesbian sister on ABC's Relativity (1996); a high-priced call girl turned Rob Lowe's date on The West Wing (1999); an assigned male at birth (AMAB) transgender woman on Ally McBeal (2000); and Ben Covington's (Scott Speedman) girlfriend on Felicity (2001). She also continued to land guest-star spots on such shows as ER, Frasier, Just Shoot Me!, Without a Trace, and Judging Amy, as well as small parts in the films What Women Want, Keeping the Faith, As Good as It Gets, and Daddy Day Care.

From 2004-2011, she portrayed her biggest and most notable role to date, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, the Dean of Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and frequent adversary, friend, and eventual girlfriend of title character Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) on Fox's TV series House. Edelstein has often spoken fondly of her experiences on the show and fellow cast and crew, especially her friendship and strong working relationship with colleague Hugh Laurie.

In May 2011, Edelstein announced that she would not return for the eighth and final season of House. Starting in June 2011, she began an arc on The Good Wife as lawyer Celeste Serrano. She guest-starred in Scandal in 2013, and later three episodes of the ABC series Castle.

She currently stars as the lead role of Abby McCarthy in the Bravo series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, a one-hour-long comedy-drama loosely based on the book series by Vicki Iovine and which premiered on December 2, 2014.

She has lent her voice to several animated programs, including King of the Hill, American Dad!, Superman: The Animated Series (as Mercy Graves, Lex Luthor's bodyguard, a role she later reprised in several episodes of Justice League), Legend of Korra (as Kya, Tenzin's sister) and the video game adaptation of Blade Runner (1997).

Other appearances Edelstein is a passionate supporter of Best Friends Animal Society, of which she is an Ambassador. She supports human rights organizations and is a patron of the arts. She has appeared in numerous magazines, including the September 2010 cover of H magazine. She posed for PETA in an ad promoting vegetarianism, a diet she has followed for most of her life.

Personal life On May 25, 2014, Edelstein married artist Robert Russell in Los Angeles.

Lisa Edelstein Actress - Date of Birth: 21 May 1966, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Nickname: Lisa E. Height: 5'6"(1.68 m).

Lisa Edelstein began her professional acting career while studying theater at N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts. After performing in a wide range of productions off and on Broadway, authored and performed the AIDS-related musical "Positive Me" at Ellen Stuart's La Mama, in Manhattan. It was one one of the earliest AIDS-related theater productions. Lisa gained her first television experience as a host of the cable series Awake on the Wild Side (1990). In the last several years, she has fearlessly taken on a wide variety of roles for television. She played a call-girl girlfriend on The West Wing (1999), David Conrad's sister on Relativity (1996), the transgender girlfriend of James Le Gros on Ally McBeal (1997) and an Orthodox Jewish woman on Family Law (1999). She also played James Spader's love interest on The Practice (1997), and has had numerous other TV roles and guest appearances. From 2004-2011, she played the hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit medical drama House (2004). A noted Manhattan nightclub denizen as a college student, she was the subject of a 1986 New York Times Magazine profile written by Maureen Dowd. Wrote, composed and performed in Positive Me, a 1989 musical piece about AIDS produced by off-Broadway's LaMama theater company; Thomas Gibson was in the cast. Made her film debut as a makeup artist in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991). Voiced the role of Lex Luthor's aide Mercy Graves in Superman: The Animated Series, as well as in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon series; also voiced Crystal Steele in the Blade Runner CD-ROM game. Is a longtime vegetarian. Does volunteer work for the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, Save the Children, Planned Parenthood and AmFAR. Awards: 2008, Screen Actors Guild Awards — Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series: Nominee, 2011, People's Choice Awards — Favorite TV Drama, Actress: Winner, Relationships: Alvin Edelstein — Father, Bonnie Edelstein — Mother, Robert Russell — Husband. College: Attended New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, New York, New York, United States.

Lisa Edelstein, Good Wife. After years of playing second fiddle to Hugh Laurie's selfish, outspoken misanthrope on House, Lisa Edelstein is ready to have some similar fun of her own. "I loved playing Cuddy for all this time, but I definitely wanted to shift out of that, because I've been playing this sort of repressed control freak for seven years," she tells TVGuide.com. "I want to have a little bit of fun." We've redesigned, refashioned, and reinvented the Sportage. The all-new 2017 Sportage - completely redesigned with Dynamax AWD, Andriod Auto and Panoramic Sunroof - made for your life's journey. Sponsored by All-New 2017 Kia Sportage

Edelstein shocked House fans earlier this year when she announced she was hanging up her stethoscope after seven seasons — essentially leaving the complicated "Huddy" relationship unresolved. (The last fans saw of Cuddy was when House was driving his car into her dining room, so complicated may be an understatement). Now, just six months after her departure, Edelstein is already back on the small screen with a multi-episode arc on The Good Wife. Check out all the familiar faces returning to TV this year. "They called me less than a week after I made the official announcement," she says. "It made me feel like I — in taking care of myself — had made the right decision. I just really wanted to break the spell. I never intended on moving to The Good Wife permanently, but in terms of a next move and something to do to make myself feel good, this was a great opportunity." Although she had only seen a few episodes, Edelstein said knowing a lot of fans of the show (including her mother) helped convince her to pick the project as her first foray into the world outside Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital. "My mother is obsessed with it," she says with a laugh. "I don't watch that much television, but as soon as I decided to do it, I watched 48 episodes in a row in the span of a couple of days. I did my homework and it's a great show." House's Lisa Edelstein heads to The Good Wife. It also helped that Edelstein had so many past ties to the cast and crew of The Good Wife. "I got on that set and I'm the new kid on the block, but the director who directed that particular episode directed four or five episodes of House. Josh Charles and I worked together on Sports Night, Julianna [Margulies] and I worked on ER, Christine [Baranski] and I worked together on Cybil," she says. "I at no point felt like I was in unfamiliar territory."

Still, Edelstein admits to a case of first-day jitters, something she says she enjoyed after becoming so familiar with Cuddy. "When you play the same character for a long time, you have a shorthand. You get onto the set, you put on your outfit and two-thirds of your work is done because you've built on that work for so many years," she says. "When I got this job, I didn't audition for it, so I didn't know what they were thinking in their heads, only what we had talked about on the phone. So it was a risky, scary first day for me and I haven't had that feeling in a long time." House star Hugh Laurie: Lisa Edelstein's departure was "a great shock"

As for the role itself, Edelstein plays lawyer (and Will's ex) Celeste Serrano, and she's everything Cuddy wasn't. Where Cuddy was "repressed" and tried to cure House of his many addictions, Celeste speaks her mind and is more than willing to try to pull Will back to his past vices, mainly gambling (except now with Cheerios instead of chips). "She really is his heroin dealer in that sense," she says. "When people enjoy doing bad things, they usually do it with partners and when you lose that partner, you lose a very important relationship in your life. It feels like that's her relationship with Will, and she wants it back. When she sees sparks of his wily ways, it turns her on and she wants it back." Celeste asked Will for a job at Lockhart Gardner last week. Does that mean his dealer is here to stay? Edelstein says she "probably will go back and do a few more" episodes beyond her initial three-episode arc (nothing is confirmed yet), but for now she's focused on finding a more permanent gig, preferably one both in front of and behind the camera. "Mostly what I'm trying to do now — in terms of when I'm looking for more permanent places to go — is to be part of the creative team of something and be more participatory in the development of a show and be a producer," she says. "It doesn't mean I have to be No. 1 on the call sheet either; it just means that I want to use more of my brain." In the meantime, Edelstein still has to find a way to break it to House fans that Cuddy has really left the building. "It's funny because not everybody knows that I left the show. I get a lot of 'Congratulations! I'm so excited to watch the show again,' and I just don't say anything. I say thank you. They'll figure it out at some point," she says. "I just move on."