Who is phoebe in friends

But while Phoebe's life might seem to be full of unicorns and rainbows, the story of her life is actually filled with more than its share of sadness and tragedy as well as laughter. For those of you who would like to learn more about this offbeat bohemian, here are all the highs and lows of Phoebe Buffay's story.

From the very start, Phoebe's life was unconventional. Bob Balaban and Lily Buffay, a drug dealer. Her natural mother actually gave birth to both Phoebe and her twin sister Ursula, but when Phoebe Abbott decided she didn't want to be a mother, she left Frank and Lily to raise the girls on their own. Sadly, Frank soon abandoned Lily, who was ill-suited to give Phoebe and Ursula anything resembling a normal childhood.

Oddly enough, this didn't seem to extend to her actual life, since Lily married a man who went to prison and later killed herself by sticking her head in an oven and getting carbon monoxide poisoning. As if this wasn't bad enough, while Ursula was sent into foster care, Phoebe wound up living on the streets at the tender age of fourteen.

With the twins on such divergent life paths, it's no wonder that they ended up becoming two very different people. Originally, Ursula was created as a character for the sitcom " Mad About You ," where she was introduced as an incompetent and ditzy waitress who eventually became Governor of New York in a possible future.

However, when Kudrow was cast as Phoebe in "Friends," the producers decided to reimagine Ursula as her twin sister, making Phoebe the reason why the two sitcoms exist in a shared universe. As the polar opposite of the usually sweet-tempered Phoebe, Ursula is a selfish, mean-spirited woman who grew up in luxury while her sister was living on the streets. Feeling superior to other people, Ursula regularly takes advantage of other people, including her twin sister.

Although her early life was difficult and full of hardship, Phoebe's time as a street urchin did give her one of television's most colorful backstories. At various points in her life, Phoebe lived in a broken-down Buick LeSabre as well as with an albino window washer who eventually killed himself is anyone else sensing a disturbing pattern here? In the Season 10 episode "The One With The Home Study," Phoebe recalled that on her sweet sixteenth birthday, an escaped mental patient who wanted to kill her chased her around a tire yard.

While Phoebe never attended high school or college, she did receive an unconventional education. In the Season 10 episode "The One Where Joey Speaks French," Phoebe revealed she's fluent in French and learned the language behind a dumpster with a small group of friends during her formative years.

Other episodes show she also knows Italian, making her at least trilingual. Street life also took Phoebe outside the United States, all the way to Prague in fact, where she lived for a time before moving back to New York. Being homeless on the streets of New York is dangerous, and Phoebe picked up some impressive boxing skills while she was living at the YMCA because " some of the young men weren't acting Christian enough.

Of course, living on the streets does make it hard to secure gainful employment, so Phoebe had to develop another unique set of skills — thieving. At multiple points in the "Friends" series, Phoebe shared stories about her early life, revealing that "Street Phoebe" was a very different person from the kind-hearted woman her friends know and love.

During her early years, Phoebe sometimes mugged people to survive. In an ironic twist, Phoebe realized she once robbed Ross when she was fourteen-years-old, taking his self-published comic book "Science Boy" from him.

Luckily, she kept the comic from her larcenous days, and was able to return it to Ross. To be honest though Ross is probably lucky that Phoebe only robbed him. In the Season 5 episode "The One with Ross's Sandwich," Phoebe confesses that she once stabbed a cop after he stabbed her. We all have a few skeletons in our closet, but Phoebe's are likely a bit darker than most. We all have to grow up sometimes, and that includes the mugger once known as "Street Phoebe.

While she still lived a bohemian lifestyle, at this point she was far from the street urchin she once was although she was clearly the strangest member of her group. Over the next several seasons, Phoebe revealed more about her past, admitting that "Street Phoebe" probably wouldn't have hung out with Ross, Rachel, Chandler, and Joey, showing how far she had come since then. Indeed, while she claimed to still be an independent massage therapist who hated large corporations, she ended up working for a corporate spa in Season 9's "The One With The Fertility Test" for better money and benefits.

She ended up going through several rounds, where she had to do monologues and perform in a theater, but her prime focus along the way was not losing her role on Mad About You. When the Friends pilot was picked up to go to series, she thankfully was able to do double duty. But then the schedule came out and the shows were on back to back.

The idea came about to make Phoebe and Ursula twin sisters so that there was a link. Bright told EW. I think feeling the [stress] she put her sister into by being the double was more in her head at the time, so those scenes were a little bit tricky to shoot. But it ended up being a lot of fun when you put it together. The challenges paid off. Kudrow became the first person in the Friends cast to win an acting Emmy Award, taking home the supporting actress trophy in And when she looks back on Phoebe, she realizes the profound effect the role had on her.

She loosened me up! To celebrate the classic s TV show, here a few fun facts that will make you happy. She describes an encounter with a pimp who gave her hepatitis. On another occasion, she mentions being chased around by an escaped mental institution patient on her sixteenth birthday.

During a playful sparring match with Joey, where she draws blood, Phoebe reveals that she learned to box while staying at the YMCA. Her light-hearted description of the events suggests that she may have been sexually assaulted while staying there. Phoebe secretly marries him so that he can become a United States citizen, but falls in love with him. Unfortunately, she is left heartbroken when he leaves to pursue his career. Duncan first appears as a gay man, and the marriage is one of convenience.

However, he later returns to ask Phoebe for a divorce so that he can marry another woman after realizing that he wasn't gay after all.

Prasan is an animator and designer from sunny South Africa. His writing experience comes from ten years of creating marketing campaigns for international brands. He's an avid gamer, petrolhead and home cook. He loves dogs and opossums. By Prasan Nundlal Published Jul 23, Share Share Tweet Email 0. Related Topics Lists friends Sitcoms. The 10 Most Disliked Cartoon Characters. What If? Every Episode, Ranked.