Lisa Edelstein isn’t a doctor – she just plays one on TV. But the medical milieu of the Fox drama House is familiar turf for the 44 year-old actress whose own father was a pediatrician in New Jersey. Just like Dr. Lisa Cuddy, her character on the smart-aleck medical drama, Edelstein has a feisty, independent streak, which makes her daily job of the last seven years not much of a stretch.
Edelstein grew up in a traditional Jewish family, but began to make her own distinctive choices early. At 15, she embraced vegetarianism – never to look back – and at 16 she was recruited to fill a cheerleader opening for Donald Trump’s New Jersey Generals team in the old U.S. Football League. After graduating high school, she moved across the Hudson River to study theatre at New York University and became a fixture in the city’s club scene. And as evidenced by her playful booty shaking when Beyonce’s Single Ladies was turned up during the photo shoot, Edelstein still likes to laugh and dance.
“Usually if you’re laughing, you’re able to see the world from a different point of view,” she says. “Something has taken you by surprise in a good way or you can see yourself from the outside and have a laugh. I think it has to do with altering your perspective, which is something we all need every day – to shake us out of whatever we think is important.”
Undaunted by daily shakeups, Edelstein reveals parts of herself that constantly take her out of her comfort zone – she changes clothes several times a day. “I’m such an emotional dresser but it’s not about a favorite colour or favorite this or that. It’s for whatever reason and I’ve done that since I was a little kid. It’s a form of self-expression or a different kind of comfort or a different mood.” Try as she might, the effervescent actress just can’t resist looking at herself as an outside observer. “I try to remind myself that there is another way to look at everything. There are a lot of ways we can get upset during the day – idiot drivers, someone upset your friend – and there are a million ways you have to find some empathy, some humour, shake it up a bit so that you can process the information in a way that’s actually forward moving rather than paralyzing.”
Throughout her life, Edelstein has been in forward motion, giving credit to and remembering some of her early childhood influences. One was her love for animals, which has brought two canines, Kapow and Shazam, to her life and encouraged her to donate time to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary along with Save The Children and Planned Parenthood. “I was always an animal lover,” she reflects. “At one point I found a cat who adopted me. She had no home so I brought her to mine despite the fact that my entire family was really allergic to her. It ended up that she was pregnant and had five kittens that everyone was allergic to, but I found a home for each one.” Sadly, they all died within six weeks. “It was so devastating to me because I loved each one.” Her extraordinarily tight bond with animals even brought – and still brings – her to tears. “Bambi was the most traumatizing film of my childhood,” she admits. “I couldn’t watch Lassie, Black Beauty or Rin Tin Tin. It’s just the way I’m built.”
Was this also some sort of spiritual awakening to vegetarianism? “No, I don’t think so,” she says. “It was something that was true to me from a very young age. I never liked meat, period, and was always a fussy eater. By the time I was old enough to really get on a visceral level what meat was – I mean to really understand that steak is a piece of muscle – and to understand what you’re eating, it was just very clear to me that it was something I didn’t want in my life.”
So while Cuddy is a stressed-out physician, Edelstein in real life is a committed vegetarian who finds happiness in life’s daily routines. And in a town where actresses seek out the newest fad in dieting, this actress seeks out the newest in cookbooks. “I love reading cookbooks,” she says. “I got a new one as a Hanukkah gift this past year, Clean Food, and it’s fantastic. In reading a cookbook, I look for new recipes that I like or ones that will educate me and expose me to something new. Then I experiment with them and make my own little changes here and there.”
Edelstein isn’t wed to one certain cuisine; in fact, she loves cooking Thai, Indian, Asian, you name it. “Exploring the many flavours of other cultures is exciting. Making yourself a good meal, cooking for others, however you express yourself that gets you out of your own focus helps shake things up,” she says. “But at the same time, it adds to your overall balance. Creating a different chemistry in your body by exercising or meditating or cooking are good examples.”
Her intelligent approach to healthy living heavily relies on her own kitchen talents. “I love to cook because I put myself in a service position where I want to give other people pleasure and good health,” she says. “So that gets me out of my own head. I had about 35 people over recently and cooked everything from this new cookbook; everything was tasty, delicious, interesting and unexpected. Nobody went home hungry.”
While Edelstein doesn’t possess the medical background of her character Lisa Cuddy, she is more than knowledgeable about her own health and wellbeing. Besides the fact that she looks at least a decade younger than she is, she admits that indicators on energy, stamina, hair and complexion from her eating plan are not possible. “I wouldn’t know the difference because I’ve been a vegetarian for so long,” she says. “But vegetarianism makes me feel better about how I live my own life according to what is important to me.” She also adds regular exercise to her routine for a full sense of general wellbeing and self-confidence. “Besides swimming and taking long walks with my dogs, I practice ashtanga yoga everyday,” she says. “I’ve been doing that for about 14 years. I like it because it’s a self-practice and it’s a nice way of checking in with myself on a daily basis. So it helps centre me … keeps me grounded.”
And Edelstein doesn’t need a flashy exercise trend or two to keep herself content and on even keel. “I think any practice that you show up for every single day will help centre and balance your life,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be yoga. I think people who swim for an hour a day or go for long walks every day … whatever it is that changes your relationship with yourself. For me, I function much better with structure.” Although she is still learning about herself, she finds comfort in her constant balance and disciplined routines. “There are moments when I look at the big picture of life, but mostly it’s a day-to-day practice of seeing myself,” she says. “I write a journal every morning and have for many years. It’s incredibly boring but it’s just me trying to remember what my day was like yesterday and how I felt. It’s not clever – it’s a total stream of consciousness. But it’s me showing up, checking in and clearing out my head, trying to move forward from that place. So I’m constantly learning about myself.”
But life has come together very nicely for this bi-coastal resident who lives in Los Angeles and keeps her place in New York City. Yet with two homes, she loves to get out of her comfort zone and travel, a passion she discovered when House allowed her the freedom to do so. “Travelling puts things in perspective,” she says. Stepping outside of your everyday life helps you fix things when you get back because you recognize that the perception comes out of having great fortune in life.”
Behind this former New York party girl is a sincere, sensitive, confident woman who deeply cares about humanity and fragility. “I think no matter how confident you are as a person, when you put yourself out there like I have to do, the amount of judgment that you expect to come your way is much bigger than what you’d normally deal with in just going to the grocery store,” she says. “But like I said, it’s all about altering your point of view on life and daily things. I think it’s as simple as that.”
