I’m not feeling well when I answer the phone. It’s that season, I suppose. The one that can leave you talking through your nose—freezing with unexplained shivers in one stuffed breath, and sweating like a UFC fighter in the next. Basically, it’s a day
that reminds me how grateful I am to have a work-fromhome gig that sees mismatched Old Navy pajamas and
a Lululemon headband as formalwear. When I answer, however, it’s Lisa Edelstein—better known as Dean of Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy, on David Shore’s awardwinning medical drama House, M.D. And while I am tempted to ask this endocrinologist-posing thespian what she suggests I do for my cold, I have to remind myself that her convincing portrayal of the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital administrator is just that: a portrayal. Because, turns out, there’s a whole lot more to Lisa Edelstein than serving as foil to the he-said-what?! Dr. Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie.

From her introduction to television in the early 1990s as the nightlife-savvy Lisa E on MTV’s Awake on the Wild Side and early appearances in comedy classics like Seinfeld, to bigger roles in programs like The West Wing, Ally McBeal, and The Practice, Edelstein’s career has been climbing in the right direction for the last decade and a half. But as she talks to me from her century-old home in Los Angeles, I learn that intelligently written scripts aren’t the only things sprawled around her house. There is also a dog and cat. And more than a fair share of yoga mats.

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