French, Dawn

▪ 2004

      Although Dawn French had achieved her greatest renown in Great Britain for her comedic partnership with Jennifer Saunders and had also amassed a respectable list of performing credits on her own—she was sometimes referred to as the country's “first lady of television comedy”—in 2003 French took a giant step toward greater international recognition when she signed for a role—the Fat Lady, a talking painting—in the third Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, to be released in 2004. Only weeks earlier she had portrayed Potter himself in a spoof of the first two films for the BBC's Comic Relief marathon fund-raiser.

      French was born on Oct. 11, 1957, in Holyhead, Wales. She and Saunders met and first teamed up in the late 1970s, when they were students at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, and they joined up again in 1980 as cast members of the Comic Strip, a London comedy club. A number of television appearances followed, especially in Comic Strip productions and the Girls on Top series, which French co-wrote, and in 1987 the duo began co-writing and costarring in their own series, French and Saunders. In 1991 French began her solo career as star of the comic drama series Murder Most Horrid; a second series followed in 1994. In the meantime, she had demonstrated her dramatic acting talents in 1993 in the BBC drama Tender Loving Care. French's most popular solo venture began in 1994 with the TV series The Vicar of Dibley, for which she won a British Comedy Award in 1997. From 1995 she also served as a writer for and made occasional appearances on Saunders' series Absolutely Fabulous. Among other TV roles were leads in the 1997 BBC drama Sex and Chocolate and the 2002 BBC romantic comedy Ted and Alice.

      French had a notable stage career as well, most recently in the role of Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2001 and the one-woman play My Brilliant Divorce in 2003. She continued to make appearances with Saunders on tour and in TV specials, and in 2002 at the Montreux (Switz.) Light Entertainment Festival, they became the first women to win an Honorary Golden Rose. She also was partner, with Helen Teague, in the French and Teague designer clothing label and in Sixteen 47, a business selling stylish clothes for large women. In 1984 French married comedian Lenny Henry—winner of the Golden Rose and the Edric Connor Inspiration Award for black achievement and founder of Comic Relief, for which he was appointed CBE in 1999.

Barbara Whitney

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