AceShowbiz -

She is best known for being the lovable Phoebe Buffay in the long-running TV sitcom "Friends" but who knew that actress Lisa Kudrow had such a hard time making friends in school. Apparently, it led her to making a crucial life decision at the young age of 16, doing what she believed was a "life-altering" rhinoplasty on her nose, as she revealed in a new interview for the November/December issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

"I went from, in my mind, hideous, to not hideous," the now 50-year-old Kudrow said about her then teenage looks. "I did it the summer before going to a new high school. So there were plenty of people who wouldn't know how hideous I looked before. That was a good, good, good change."

She got the nose job after junior high when she experienced the pain of rejection from her two best friends who by the time they entered seventh grade decided they no longer wanted her to be associated with them. She described it as "really brutal" and "very hard." "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."

And like a blessing in disguise, these feelings were what the Kudrow used as her motivation for her role as the "fearless and unapologetic" Phoebe, "a ditzy girl who lived in a happier reality than everybody else, because everything was so gloomy around her." The "Scandal" star now feels that through her beloved character on "Friends", she has been able to provide "people who don't feel they fit in perfectly well" with someone they can totally relate to.