Friends star Lisa Kudrow makes tearful reveal during rare interview

Lisa Kudrow has been super busy recently, as she celebrated her 61st birthday while hot on the press trail for Time Bandits . As she joined Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson on SiriusXM's Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, she opened up about what she's best known for - her time on Friends .

The actress suddenly shot to fame through her role as Phoebe Buffay, and according to the star it was certainly an emotional journey to accepting that.

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"There's a lot of dynamics… in terms of your relationship with the popularity of it and the fame and the little realizations you have about it," she explained in the interview. "My way of dealing with it was just to downplay."

She added that as her family all lived with her, they kept her in check - especially as she had a child: "That's the priority. All this stuff, sometimes you go a little to far with it 'none of this is important at all.'"

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Her perspective changed from pure nonchalance to something more emotional after 9/11, when the mood across the country radically changed.

"I was driving home from work and I would drive home in LA," she said. "And if I'm stopped, someone in the car next to me might look over and go 'ah,' and wave or something."

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"After 9/11, and it happened a few times driving home, someone's next to me and they just looked over and they just looked exhausted and tired and just went 'thank you,'" she revealed. "It almost made me cry and that's where it hit me. 'Oh no, we are actually providing a service, like a mental health service.'"

It was when Lisa realized how important Friends ' light entertainment was to people, that she felt more comfortable in her fame and began to accept it.

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"By entertaining people, they definitely need to not look at the news for a minute and just laugh and be part of a world where all that didn't happen," she explained her comparison between the hit TV show and a mental health service.

The star added that she and her co-stars certainly supported each other through the pressure of being on such a large platform, particularly when it felt like she needed to put more effort into her role.

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Her colleague Matt LeBlanc certainly helped when she put herself down for "slacking off."

"I was getting really mad at myself, and LeBlanc came. He said, 'What's going on with you?' I said 'I'm being lazy. I'm not doing the work that I did in the first season, second season. I'm not doing the work I did for Phoebe, so it can’t be good.'"

Matt reassured her, putting the actress's fears to rest by saying: "you know who the character is now. You don’t need to do the work you did. You got it."