Lisa Edelstein
The Dean of Medicine on TV's House is Often Called the Florence Nightingale of Dogs
By Lori Golden
After spending years honing her acting craft in films and television, portraying colorful people such as Rob Lowe’s call-girl girlfriend on The West Wing; a transsexual boyfriend on Ally McBeal; and a lesbian on Relativity, Lisa Edelstein has landed a plum role on the critically acclaimed, hit medical drama, House, as the head of the hospital and boss of the brilliant Dr. Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie. “It’s definitely a shift to be on the same show for this long,” says Lisa of her role as Dean of Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy. “I’m just enjoying it while it’s here.”
Something else Lisa enjoys is her menagerie of animals that consists of one cat and three dogs, all rescues with unique stories that have definitely impacted her personal view of what she does best when it comes to dealing with animals.
Raised in Wayne, New Jersey, Lisa recalls a pivotal moment in her youth that impacted her future as an animal rescuer. “I was adopted by a neighborhood cat who decided that I was ‘it’. My entire family was allergic to cats, but this cat and I just bonded, and she then began to have litters in my house. This was really before the days of figuring out that you have to get your cats neutered. And she was someone else’s cat who just decided that I was her keeper. So she had a few litters and we got them homes. I guess this was my first lesson in that - getting these reports back about these kittens that I’d raised that people had adopted – that had been killed this way or that way or left behind – it was devastating. I was probably 12 or 13. I cried so hard with every story that came back to me. I couldn’t believe that people were that idiotic. They were just thoughtless about animals.
