Fran Drescher

Francine Joy Drescher (born September 30, 1957) is an American actress, comedian, writer, activist, and trade union leader, currently serving as the national president of the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

Drescher was born on September 30, 1957, in Queens, a borough of New York City, the younger daughter of Sylvia, a bridal consultant, and Morty Drescher, a naval systems analyst.

Her family is Jewish, from Southeast and Central Europe.

Her maternal great-grandmother Yetta was born in Focșani, Romania, and emigrated to the United States, while her father's family came from Poland.

She has an older sister.

Drescher was a first runner-up for "Miss New York Teenager" in 1973.

She attended Flushing's Parsons Junior High School, which later dissolved, and then Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens.

Drescher graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1975; one of her classmates was comedian Ray Romano.

Drescher's character Fran Fine from The Nanny and Romano's character Ray Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond met at a 20th high school reunion on an episode of The Nanny.

Drescher and Jacobson attended Queens College, City University of New York, but dropped out in their first year because "all the acting classes were filled."

She then enrolled in cosmetology school.

Drescher made her screen debut with a small role in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever and later appeared in American Hot Wax (1978) and Wes Craven's horror film Stranger in Our House (1978).

Drescher's first break was a small role as dancer Connie in the movie Saturday Night Fever (1977), in which she delivered the line "So, are you as good in bed as you are on the dance floor?"

to John Travolta's character.

There she met her future husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, whom she married in 1978, at age 21.

A year later, she began to gain attention in films such as American Hot Wax (1978) and Summer of Fear (1978).

In the 1980s, she gained recognition as a comedic actress in the films Gorp (1980), The Hollywood Knights (1980), Doctor Detroit (1983), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), and UHF (1989) while establishing a television career with guest appearances on several series.

During the 1980s, Drescher found success as a character actress with roles in films such as Gorp (1980), The Hollywood Knights (1980), Doctor Detroit (1983), The Big Picture (1989), UHF (1989), Cadillac Man (1990), and memorably in This Is Spinal Tap (1984) as publicist Bobbi Flekman.

She also took on a rare dramatic role in the 1981 Miloš Forman film Ragtime.

She also made an appearance in a second-season episode of Who's the Boss? in 1985 as an interior decorator.

She also had an appearance on Night Court as a woman with dissociative identity disorder who flips from a prude to a sexually minded woman and ends up in a hotel with ADA Dan Fielding.

In 1990, Drescher appeared on ALF as Roxanne, the wife of grown-up Brian, who had no clue she was a mob boss, in the episode "Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades".

In the early-to-mid 1990s, she voiced "Peggy" from The P Pals on PBS (the woman with the flower on her hat).

In 1991, Drescher co-starred on the short-lived CBS sitcom Princesses.

She is known for her role as Fran Fine in the television sitcom The Nanny (1993–1999), which she created and produced with her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson.

In 1993, she achieved wider fame as Fran Fine in her own sitcom vehicle The Nanny, for which she was nominated for two Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Television Series during the show's run.

Drescher and Jacobson created their own television show, The Nanny, in 1993.

The show aired on CBS from 1993 to 1999, and Drescher became an instant star.

In this sitcom, she played a woman named Fran Fine who casually became the nanny of Margaret ("Maggie") (played by Nicholle Tom), Brighton ("B") (played by Benjamin Salisbury), and Grace ("Gracie") Sheffield (played by Madeline Zima); with her wit and her charm, she endeared herself to their widower father: stuffy, composed, proper British gentleman and Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield (Charles Shaughnessy).

She reprised her This is Spinal Tap character of Bobbi Flekman, a look-alike for her Fran Fine character, in season 5, episode 3, of The Nanny.

Drescher appeared in Jack (1996), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, The Beautician and the Beast (1997) (for which she was also executive producer) and Picking Up the Pieces (2000) co-starring Woody Allen.

They divorced in 1999.

In the 2000s, Drescher starred in the sitcoms Living with Fran and Happily Divorced.

In the 2000s, Drescher made a return to television both with leading and guest roles.

She was also the voice of "Pearl" in Shark Bait (2006).

From 2012 to 2022, she starred in the animated Hotel Transylvania film series.

In 2014, Drescher made her Broadway debut in Cinderella as stepmother Madame.

In 2020, she starred in the NBC sitcom Indebted.

The national members of the trade union SAG-AFTRA, representing actors and other media professionals, elected Drescher as their president on September 2, 2021, and she took office that October 15.

Drescher led the union during the five month actors' strike that began on July 14, 2023, concurrently with the writers' strike that began in May.