Coraline cake from movie
British actress, comedian, presenter and writer. The RAF partly funded French’s private education. Coraline cake from movie her father was stationed at RAF Faldingworth, French attended Caistor Grammar School for one year.
French has said that her self-confidence and self-belief stem from her father, who told her how beautiful she was each day. She stated, “He taught me to value myself. He told me that I was beautiful and the most precious thing in his life. In 1977, French began studying drama at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she met her future comedy partner, Jennifer Saunders.
French and Saunders shared a flat whilst at college and were influenced to do comedy by their flatmates as part of their projects for college. After talking in depth for the first time, they came to be friends. While at college, French broke up with her fiancé, a former Royal Navy officer. French has had an extensive career on television, debuting on Channel 4’s The Comic Strip Presents series in an episode called “Five Go Mad in Dorset” in 1982. French and Saunders have also followed separate careers. During French’s time starring in Murder Most Horrid, from 1991 to 1999, she played a different character each week, whether it was the murderer, victim, or both. French’s biggest solo television role to date has been as the title figure in the long-running BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley, which Richard Curtis created for her.
In 1995 she appeared as a talk-show host in a Comic Relief sketch called Dawn, written by Victoria Wood. In the series, set in the Lake District, French played a tourist information officer who falls in love with an alien. Jerusalem as a woman called Rosie who has dissociative identity disorder and with it an alter ego called “Margaret”. In 2006, French appeared in Agatha Christie’s Marple in the 2006 episode “Sleeping Murder”. Val Have Just Got In with actor Alfred Molina, which aired for two series.
French appeared in Little Crackers, short comedy films which were broadcast over Christmas in 2010. French appeared as a special guest on Michael Bublé’s Home For Christmas in December 2011. In July 2012, she was a judge in ITV’s Superstar live shows. In 2020 she appeared in the six-part series The Trouble with Maggie Cole alongside Mark Heap. In 1996 French appeared in The Adventures of Pinocchio as “The Baker’s Wife” alongside Martin Landau and star Jonathan Taylor Thomas. She has also taken roles in the theatre.
In December 2022, French began appearing in Jack and the Beanstalk at the London Palladium. In 2014, French toured an autobiographical one woman show 30 Million Minutes in the UK and Oceania. The title is based on the amount of minutes she had been alive at the time of producing the show. In late 2022 it was announced that she would continue touring the UK with the same show in autumn 2023.
French was chosen as the face of Terry’s Chocolate Orange, until August 2007, when she was dropped. In 2019, French provided her voice for numerous Station idents for Greatest Hits Radio. This was produced in partnership with Bespoke Music. S Food Christmas range for 2022. French has also written a best-selling epistolary autobiography, which she has titled Dear Fatty. 5 million advance for the book, which was released in 2008.
