Fran Drescher

Francine Joy Drescher (born September 30, 1957) is an American actress, writer, comedian, producer, and former trade union leader. She played Fran Fine in the television sitcom The Nanny (1993–1999), which she created and produced with her then-husband Peter Marc Jacobson.

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

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. In the 2000s, Drescher starred in the sitcoms Living with Fran and Happily Divorced. 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 trade union SAG-AFTRA, representing actors and other media professionals, elected Drescher as president, and she took office on October 15, 2021. Drescher led the union during the five-month actors' strike that began on July 14, 2023, partially overlapping with the writers' strike that had begun in May of that year. In July 2024, Drescher led another strike against major video game publishers, which ended in 2025.

Early life and education

Francine Joy Drescher was born on September 30, 1957, in Queens, a borough of New York City, the younger daughter of Sylvia Drescher (born 1934), a bridal consultant, and Morty Drescher (1929–2024), a naval systems analyst. Her family is Jewish, from Southeast and Central Europe. Her maternal great-grandmother Yetta was born in Focșani, Romania, and immigrated to the United States, while her father's family came from Poland. She has an older sister, Nadine. 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. There she met her future husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, whom she married in 1978, at age 21. They divorced in 1999. 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." They then enrolled in cosmetology school.

Career

Early career

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. A year later, she began to gain attention in films such as American Hot Wax (1978) and Summer of Fear (1978). She also took on a rare dramatic role in the 1981 Miloš Forman film Ragtime. 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 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 Assistant District Attorney 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 1991, Drescher co-starred on the short-lived CBS sitcom Princesses. In the early-to-mid 1990s, she voiced "Peggy" from The P Pals on PBS (the woman with the flower on her hat).

The Nanny and film roles

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

In 2025, she reprised her Spinal Tap role of Bobbi Flekman in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues; prior to this, Flekman had also made an appearance on a 1997 episode of The Nanny.

She appears in Marty Supreme (2025), directed by Josh Safdie as the mother of Timothée Chalamet's character, "Marty Mauser".

Return to television

In the 2000s, Drescher made a return to television both with leading and guest roles. In 2003, Drescher appeared in episodes of the short-lived sitcom Good Morning, Miami as Roberta Diaz. In 2005, she returned with the sitcom Living with Fran, in which she played Fran Reeves, a middle-aged mother of two living with Riley Martin (Ryan McPartlin), a man half her age and not much older than her son. Former Nanny costar Charles Shaughnessy appeared as her philandering ex-husband, Ted. Living with Fran was cancelled on May 17, 2006, after two seasons.

In 2006, Drescher guest-starred in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent; the episode, "The War at Home", aired on US television on November 14, 2006. She also appeared in an episode of Entourage and, in the same year, gave her voice to the role of a female golem in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XVII". In 2007, Drescher appeared in the US version of the Australian improvisational comedy series Thank God You're Here. In 2008, Drescher announced that she was developing a new sitcom entitled The New Thirty, also starring Rosie O'Donnell. A series about two old high school friends coping with midlife crises, Drescher described the premature plot of the show as "kind of Sex and the City but we ain't getting any! It'll probably be more like The Odd Couple." It was never produced.

In 2010, Drescher returned to television with her own daytime talk show, The Fran Drescher Tawk Show. While the program debuted to strong ratings, it ended its three-week test run to moderate success, resulting in its shelving. The following year, the sitcom Happily Divorced, created by Drescher and her ex-husband, Peter Marc Jacobson, was picked up by TV Land for a ten-episode order. It premiered there June 15, 2011. The show was renewed in July 2011 for a second season of 12 episodes, which aired in spring 2012. On May 1, 2012, TV Land extended the second season and picked up 12 additional episodes, taking the second season total to 24. The back-order of season two debuted later in 2012. Happily Divorced was cancelled in August 2013.

To promote Happily Divorced, Drescher performed the weddings of three gay couples in New York City using the minister's license she received from the Universal Life Church. Drescher hand-picked the three couples, all of whom were entrants into "Fran Drescher's 'Love Is Love' Gay Marriage Contest" on Facebook, based on the stories the couples submitted about how they met, why their relationship illustrated that "love is love" and why they wanted to be married by her.