Fran Drescher

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Fran Drescher

Fran Drescher
Born September 30, 1957
Flushing, Queens, New York
Notable roles Fran Fine in The Nanny

Francine Joy Drescher (born September 30, 1957) is an American film, television actress and an "it girl". She is famous for her nasal voice, "machine-gun" laugh, and Queens accent.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Drescher was born in Flushing, Queens, New York City to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin.[1] Drescher grew up in Queens with her parents, Sylvia and Morty Drescher, and was a studious girl who was quite popular in school. Drescher attended Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens.[2] At age fifteen, she met the man she believed that she would spend much of her life with, Peter Marc Jacobson. In 1978, at age twenty-one, the two married.

Her first break was a bit part in the movie Saturday Night Fever (1977).

In January 1985, robbers ransacked Drescher's Los Angeles apartment and raped her and a friend at gunpoint. It took her many years to overcome this ordeal, and it took her even longer to admit this to the press. She was paraphrased as saying in an interview with Larry King that although it was a very negative experience, she found ways to turn her experience into something positive. In her book Cancer Schmancer, she is quoted to have said, "My whole life has been about changing negatives into positives." She saw her rapist sent to prison.

[edit] The Nanny and film roles

She continued to play small but memorable roles in movies, until she finally created her own vehicle, The Nanny. She was visiting her friend, model Twiggy, in England and came up with the plotline. The show aired on CBS from 1993 to 1999, becoming an instant success, and so did Fran. In this sitcom, she played a charming and bubbly woman, named Fran Fine, who casually became the pantyhose-clad nanny of three children; with her wit and her charm, she endeared herself to their widower father Maxwell Sheffield, a stuffy, composed, proper British gentleman and a Broadway producer (played by British actor Charles Shaughnessy).

Two of the many sides of Fran
Enlarge
Two of the many sides of Fran

Her voice is a combination of a high nasal pitch and a New York accent that people find either annoying, endearing, or humorous (or all three). In her autobiography, Drescher discusses the fact that this is her real voice -- even though it is played up a little on-camera -- and the many voice lessons she has had to take to overcome it for movie auditions (only to have it, and her machine-gun titter, end up being her trademark). Her first book was even titled Enter Whining.

In the late 1990s, she was a defendant in a lawsuit, and later dismissed from it. Acerbic comic Dennis Miller remarked that "no one wanted to have to listen to her testify!"

During her TV experience, she also appeared in a number of films, including Jack (1996), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Beautician and the Beast (1997) (which she also executive produced) and Picking Up the Pieces (2000) co-starring Woody Allen. After separating in 1996, Fran divorced her husband, Peter Jacobson, in 1999. She then dated a man sixteen years her junior from 1998-2002. Her beloved dog, Chester, who made many appearances in her movies and on The Nanny, died in 2000 at age eighteen. She now has a chocolate pomeranian, named Esther, and lives in New York.

Drescher is also a huge fan of the rock band Phish, and has been spotted at several of their concerts.

Fran Drescher was admitted to Los Angeles's Cedars Sinai Hospital on June 21, 2000, after doctors diagnosed her with uterine cancer. But emergency surgery caught it early as it was only at Stage 1 and she didn't have to undergo radiation or chemotherapy. She has been given a clean bill of health and no post-operative treatment has been ordered. She wrote about her experiences in her second book, Cancer Schmancer.

[edit] Return to television

In 2005, she returned on TV with the sitcom Living with Fran, in which she played Fran Reeves, a middle-aged mother of two, living with Riley Martin (Ryan McPartlin, Passions), a guy half her age and barely older than her son. Former Nanny costar Charles Shaughnessy appears as her philandering ex-husband, Ted. Living with Fran was cancelled May 17, 2006 after two seasons. Fran has also appeared in episodes of the short lived sitcom, Good Morning, Miami in 2003 as Roberta Diaz.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Film

[edit] Television

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Drescher has stated that is not of Italian descent,[1] despite the numerous web sites that incorrectly report that she is part Italian; she is of Eastern European Jewish ancestry
  2. ^ Yahoo Movies - Fran Drescher. Retrieved on 2006-08-23.

[edit] External links

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