Famous Queens Resident Series, Part VII

Fran Drescher
Early life and career:
Drescher was born in Flushing, Queens, New York City to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin.[1] She 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 15 she met the man she believed she would spend much of her life with, Peter Marc Jacobson, and in 1978, at age 21, they were married.
Her first break was a bit part in the movie Saturday Night Fever (1976).
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.

The Nanny and film roles:
She continued to play small but memorable roles in movies, until she finally created her own show, 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:
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!"[citation needed]

Fran has also appeared in a number of films, including This Is Spinal Tap (1984), UHF (1989) starring "Weird Al" Yankovic, 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. In 2007 Fran announced she would voice the character of Pearl in the animated movie SharkBait. 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.

Personal Life:
Drescher is a huge fan of the rock band Phish, and has been spotted at several of their concerts.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.On June 21, 2007, the day which marks the summer solstice and her 7th anniversary of wellness, Drescher will announce the national launch of the Cancer Schmancer Movement, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all women's cancers be diagnosed while in STAGE 1, when it's most curable. Fran's vision is to galvanize women into one collective voice to alert our elected officials that our vote means more than that of the most powerful corporate lobbyist. Her goal is to live in a time when women's mortality rates drop as their healthcare improves and early cancer detection increases. More information can be found on her site at www.cancerschmancer.org.

Return to television:
In recent years, Drescher has made a return to television both with leading and guest roles. In 2005, she returned to 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.
In 2003, Drescher appeared in episodes of the short lived sitcom, Good Morning, Miami as Roberta Diaz. She also made a cameo appearance in Family Guy as a Mogwai which Peter fed and transformed into her, unfortunately her head was shoved in a microwave and exploded.
In 2006, Drescher guest starred in an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent; the episode, "The War at Home", aired on US television on November 14[3]. In 2007, Drescher will be appearing as a cast member of the US version of the Australian improvisational comedy series Thank God You're Here.

Courtesy of WIKIPEDIA