Lisa Cuddy, M.D., is a fictional character on the medical drama House. She is portrayed by Lisa Edelstein. Cuddy was the dean of medicine of the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. Cuddy quit her job after the events of season seven's finale "Moving On".

Cuddy's job title in House is Dean of Medicine and Hospital Administrator. She is Jewish, and has a mother and one sister; her father is dead. She began dreaming of becoming a doctor when she was 12, graduated from medical school at age 25 as second best in her class, and became the first female and second youngest Dean of Medicine at the age of 32 (she was actually 29 but she added three years to her age in order to seem more mature to the Selection Committee). Cuddy attended the University of Michigan, where she first met Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), and with whom she shared a one-night stand.

After hiring House to run the hospital's Diagnostics Department, Cuddy began setting aside $50,000 a year from the hospital's budget for potential legal expenses. When, during Season 1, the new Chairman of the Board Edward Vogler (Chi McBride) tries to have House fired for refusing to kowtow to his demands, Cuddy urges the board to save House and remove Vogler instead, losing the $100 million donation he had made to the hospital. In Season 2, it is revealed that Cuddy is trying to conceive a child. House agrees to administer the twice-daily injections necessary for her to undergo in-vitro fertilization and to keep the matter secret. In Season 3, Cuddy confesses to the hospital's Head of Oncology and House's best friend Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) that she has made a total of three attempts at impregnation, one of which was miscarried. She is hurt when House, who was going through Vicodin withdrawal, tells her it is a good thing she has failed to become a mother, as she would suck at it. When House's career is threatened by Detective Michael Tritter (David Morse), Cuddy falsifies documents and perjures herself in court to cover up his wrongdoing.

Cuddy questions whether House has a romantic interest in her when he interrupts her repeatedly during a blind date. When Wilson takes Cuddy to the theatre and later to an art exhibition, House intervenes in an attempt to prevent Cuddy from becoming Wilson's fourth wife. In Season 5, Cuddy reveals that she is adopting a baby girl, to be named Joy, and then is devastated when the birth-mother decides to keep the baby. House consoles her, and the two share a passionate kiss. Cuddy professes not to want a relationship with House but is touched when he has her old desk from medical school brought out of storage for her when her office is renovated. In episode "Joy to the World", Cuddy becomes a foster mother and potential adoptive mother to a baby girl she names Rachel. She initially struggles with motherhood, revealing to Wilson that she feels nothing for Rachel but soon begins to bond with her. In the episode "Under My Skin", Cuddy helps House detox from Vicodin; and the two sleep together. In the following episode, the Season 5 finale "Both Sides Now", this is revealed to have been a hallucination on House's part: in reality, he spent the evening alone and is suffering from psychiatric problems as a result of Vicodin and emotional trauma.

Throughout Season 6, Cuddy is busy with her adopted daughter and is in a relationship with a private investigator, Lucas, who was hired by House to spy on Wilson at the start of Season 5. She cared for House after he goes through rehab for Vicodin. After sensing romantic feelings from House, Cuddy tells House that she would like to be friends; but he refuses, quoting that is the "last thing he wants". In the Season 6 finale "Help Me", House gives Cuddy an antique medical text written by her great-grandfather, which prompts her to confess that she and Lucas were engaged. Cuddy, House and House's team go to Trenton to help victims where a crane collapsed on a building. House finds a woman named Hanna who is trapped under a mountain of rubble. The first responders and Cuddy both tell House that Hanna's leg needs to be amputated for a chance of survival. House and Hanna refuse for this to happen. House and Cuddy later get in an argument over it. Cuddy claims that the reason why he is refusing is because he is bitter over her engagement and what he went through with his leg years ago. During their argument, Cuddy tells him that she doesn't love him and to move on. House then decides to amputate Hanna's leg. Afterwards she is sent to the hospital but on the way she dies due to a fat embolism, caused by the amputation. With the pain he is dealing with, Hanna's death, and what Cuddy said to him earlier, when House arrives home he rips the bathroom mirror off the wall to get his stash of Vicodin. As he gets ready to take the pills, Cuddy arrives just in time. She reveals to him that even though she was moving on with her life she can't stop thinking about him. She broke off her engagement to Lucas and tells House that she loves him and they kiss. He asks her if he is hallucinating this and she asks if he took the Vicodin. He says no and drops the pills on the floor. They smile and kiss again.

Cuddy's relationship with House progressed throughout most of Season 7. In Episode 15, "Bombshells", Cuddy discovers blood in her urine. After several tests, Wilson finds a mass in Cuddy's kidney and schedules a biopsy to take place later in the episode. Further "imaging shows enhancing masses across multiple lobes of Cuddy's lungs", of which Foreman points out "That's what kidney cancer looks like when it metastasizes". Finally, just before surgery to have the tumor removed, House shows up to support his girlfriend through this tough time. Cuddy realizes at the end of the episode that the only reason House was able to overcome his selfishness was because he had taken Vicodin before visiting her in the hospital. It is here that Cuddy breaks off the relationship with House after confronting him regarding her suspicion of his relapse. In the Season 7 finale, an angry House rams his car into her house. She resigns as Dean of Medicine after this event with Eric Foreman eventually replacing her.

Cuddy was created by executive producer Bryan Singer, who had enjoyed Lisa Edelstein's portrayal of a high-priced call girl putting herself through law school on The West Wing, and sent her a copy of the pilot script. Edelstein was attracted to the program's "smart writing", and was cast in the role. The character has been described as "tough-as-nails" by Salon's Lily Burana, a woman who "clicks through the halls of the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital in low-cut sweaters and pencil skirts, bringing incredible Jewy glamour to prime time". The New York Times's Alessandra Stanley has similarly referred to her as the hospital's "comely but by-the-book chief administrator [...] who, like all heads of prestigious teaching hospitals, wears plunging necklines to work." Edelstein, questioned on whether she felt Cuddy's typical attire of tight-fitting, low-cut outfits was appropriate for her position, responded: "She doesn't care what people say [...] She's a television character, and I'm an actress playing a hospital administrator, and I don't want to be in frumpy clothes. I want to be a hot hospital administrator." TV Guide's Nina Hämmerling Smith calls Cuddy a foil for House, who "doesn't take [his] nonsense and knows how to keep him in check — more or less." The Washington Post's Tom Shales has deemed Cuddy House's "nagging nemesis", whose role is "to make House miserable". Discussing Cuddy's characterization in terms of her relationship with House, Edelstein has opined:

I think that she very much loves House and also lives vicariously through him, because she's a very smart woman who was very successful as a doctor and has a great job and a wonderful position, but also has had less and less to do with the actual practice of medicine as the years have gone by. So I think she's excited by what he does and how he does it and deeply frustrated by him at the same time.