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Jennifer Saunders

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Jennifer Jane Saunders (born 6 July 1958) is a BAFTA- and Emmy Award-winning English comedian, writer and actress.

She first came into widespread prominence in the 1980s and the early 1990s when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Along with her comedy partner Dawn French, she proceeded to write and star in their eponymous sketch show, French & Saunders and received international acclaim for writing and starring in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous where she played the lead role of Eddy Monsoon.

In her other work, she has guest starred as Andrea Waltham in Friends and voiced the evil Fairy Godmother in Shrek 2. In recent years, she has starred in Jam & Jerusalem and The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle.

Background

Saunders was born into a middle-class family in Sleaford, Lincolnshire of French and English heritage, in 1958. Her mother worked as a biology teacher and her father worked as an RAF Air Marshal who went on to work for British Aerospace. Because her father was in the military, Saunders moved schools many times. She was educated from the age of five to eighteen in boarding schools. After school, she worked for a year in Italy as an au pair.

She later received a place at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London on a drama teachers course in 1977, where she met her future comedy partner, Dawn French. Both came from RAF backgrounds. They had grown up on the same base, even having had the same best friend, although never meeting. At first, as far as Saunders was concerned, French was a "cocky little upstart". The hatred was mutual; French considered Saunders snooty and uptight. The comic duo originally did not get on well as French actually wanted to become a drama teacher whereas Saunders loathed the idea and had not understood fully what the course was about, and thus, she disliked French for being enthusiastic and confident about the course. Saunders was shocked to find that she was studying to become a teacher as her mother had filled out the application form. Her mother however, was saddened when Saunders chose not to apply for Oxbridge university education.

After the initial dislike, both Saunders and French shared a flat together whilst at college. French has remarked on Saunders' messy habits when sharing a house, stating "When we lived together in Chalk Farm she had a room at the top of the house. We got broken into and the police said, 'Well, it is quite bad, but the worst is that room at the top.' And, of course, nobody had been in there." The two later performed together after graduation, working the festival, cabaret, and stand-up circuits. They formed a double-act called The Menopause Sisters. Saunders described the act as "cringeworthy", which involved wearing tampons in their ears. The manager of the club where they performed recalled "They didn't seem to give a damn. There was no star quality about them at all."

Career

Rise to fame

Saunders and French would eventually come to public attention as members of The Comic Strip, part of the alternative comedy scene in the early 1980s. What brought them ultimate success was when they answered a 1980 advert in The Stage newspaper for female artists to become part of the unknown The Comic Strip Presents. They commented that they walked into the audition and they immediately said "You're booked".

Both Saunders and French became founding and ongoing members of the informal comedy collective The Comic Strip, along with many of the comedians who were to become their generation's most well-known comedy performers including Peter Richardson, Rik Mayall, and Robbie Coltrane, as well as Saunders' future husband Adrian Edmondson. The group performed at Soho's Raymond Review Bar with regular guests Jack Nicholson and Robin Williams. By the time Saunders and French became members of The Comic Strip, French was already working as a drama teacher, whilst Saunders was on the dole and spending a lot of her time sleeping in bed.

Her first exposure to a wider audience occurred when comedy producer Martin Lewis recorded a Comic Strip record album in Spring 1981 and featured skits by French & Saunders. The album was released on Springtime!/Island Records in September 1981. It was the first recording to feature Saunders and presented her and comedic partner Dawn French to an audience outside London. In 1980, Julien Temple filmed a documentary style film on The Comic Strip, starring Saunders playing a coy, upper class, vulnerable girl looking for her prostitute, fame hungry and attention-seeking sister.

Television

The comedy group appeared on Channel4's first night on air, in the first episode of The Comic Strip Presents: \"Five Go Mad In Dorset\" broadcast on November 2, 1982. In the episodes \"Bad News\" and \"More Bad News,\" Saunders plays a trashy rock journalist touring with the fictional heavy metal band, Bad News. In 1985, Saunders starred in and co-wrote Girls On Top with French, Tracey Ullman and Ruby Wax which portrayed four eccentric women sharing a flat in London. Saunders also appeared in Ben Elton's Happy Families where she played various members of the same family, including all four Fuddle sisters in the six episode BBC situation comedy. Dawn French, Stephen Fry, and Chris Langham also appeared.

Saunders starred with her future husband, Adrian Edmondson, in a Comic Strip film called, The Supergrass, a little-known parody of slick 1980s police dramas directed by Peter Richardson. She also appeared twice as guest in The Young Ones, in which Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson were two of the main stars.

In 1987, she and French created French & Saunders, a popular sketch comedy series for the BBC, which is still shown sporadically to this day. By the end of the 1980s, the show was an established comedy programme and became a staple in BBC viewing. In their vast amount of comedy sketches, they have parodied many well-known figures such as Cher, Madonna, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and films such as Alien and Titanic. Saunders has appeared in the Amnesty International The Secret Policeman's Biggest Ball live benefit in 1989, along with Dawn French and others.

Both Saunders and French proceeded to follow separate careers as well as maintaining their comedy sketch show. Saunders' biggest solo success to date is Absolutely Fabulous. The comedy was in fact based largely on a fourteen minute French & Saunders sketch called "Modern Mother and Daughter". Saunders and French were going to star in the comedy together, but just as the studio had been booked, French received a long-awaited phone call confirming that an adoption agency had a new baby for her to adopt. Saunders proceeded to star in the comedy. The series which she created, wrote, and starred in as the irresponsible and impossible fashion PR agent Edina Monsoon along side Joanna Lumley who played Patsy Stone, brought her international acclaim and attention. The show ran for five full series over the course of about thirteen years from 1992 to 2005, with there being an additional two-part film and three special episodes. During Absolutely Fabulous, stars such as Elton John made guest appearances. The series is also known as Ab Fab and was broadcast in America on the Comedy Central and BBC America, becoming cult viewing.

Saunders has appeared on the American-made sitcoms Roseanne and Friends. In the Friends episodes, "The One After Ross Says Rachel" and "The One with Ross's Wedding", in 1998, she played the stepmother of Emily, Ross Geller's fiancée. Her character, Andrea Waltham, was not excited about the wedding, where she and her husband tried to get as much money out of the in-laws as possible. In 1999 she appeared along side French in Let Them Eat Cake.

In less than a year Saunders has written three new series. She firstly began working on two series of Jam and Jerusalem which is about a Women's Institute. Saunders stated "I wanted to write something about the sort of community I was living in, why it works and how different it was. How life in the country didn’t have to be sinister. The first series of Jam and Jerusalem started airing on BBC One on November 24, 2006, and is now airing on BBC America in the United States as Clatterford.

As of October 4, 2007 she starred in BBC Two's The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle about a neurotic talk show host. Saunders played a horrific daytime host whose programme features crude headlines such as "Wife a slapper? Lie detector reveals all. and "I want a vagina". She wrote the new series with psychologist, Tanya Byron. Also in 2007, after twenty years of Saunders and French being on television together, the last French & Saunders series aired. It featured a compilation of old and new sketches, entitled, A Bucket o' French & Saunders, which began airing on BBC One in September, 2007. It was the third show she had written in a year. Saunders commented "We'll find a different way for French and Saunders to be on television, but the sketch format is a bit tired. There are plenty of other sketch shows on. We've done it, and we've done it well. In 2008, Saunders is currently touring live on stage with Dawn French, for their Farewell Tour, French and Saunders Still Alive: 2008.

She appeared on BBC2 Top Gear on 25 November, 2007 in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car slot, and achieved 1:46.1s in a lap of the track in the Chevrolet Lacetti, placing her in second-place at the time of broadcast.

Film

Saunders has also appeared in few films during her comedy career, such as Fanny & Elvis in 1999, starring Kerry Fox and Ray Winstone. She is also in the minority of English actresses who appear in French films also. She made a cameo appearance alongside Catherine Deneuve in a French film, based on Absolutely Fabulous in 2001, which also starred Petra Nemcova and Jean Paul Gaultier. She then appeared in In the Bleak Midwinter in 1995 directed by Kenneth Branagh and in 1996 she had a role in Muppet Treasure Island. She also made a cameo appearance in the Spice Girls' movie, Spiceworld in 1997. The Spice Girls returned the favour to her by appearing on French and Saunders, and Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) had a recurring role as herself on the fifth season of Absolutely Fabulous.

She most notably appeared in the internationally successful DreamWorks animated movie, Shrek 2 in 2004 where she voiced Princess Fiona's evil Fairy Godmother and performed the song "Holding Out for a Hero". Her part took four days to record. The film broke its own box office record in the U.S in just a fortnight, and it proceeded to make $353 million in just three weeks in the U.S. Her role won the American People's Choice Award for the best movie villain in 2005.

Personal life

Saunders married her Comic Strip partner Adrian Edmondson on 11 May 1985. They have three daughters: Eleanor "Ella" (born 22 January, 1986), Beatrice "Beattie" (born 19 June, 1987), and Freya (born 16 October, 1990). Her second daughter Beatrice has followed in her father's footsteps and is studying drama at Manchester University. Her youngest daughter, Freya, appears as her onscreen daughter in Jam and Jerusalem. Her eldest daughter, Ella, is a musician whose songs are also featured in the show, and Ella herself has made a cameo appearance.

She currently lives in Chagford, Devon. In 2002, Edmondson and Saunders were estimated to be worth £11 million.

Awards and recognition

Along with Dawn French, Saunders declined an OBE in 2001. In 2003, she was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. Saunders placed 93rd out of E!'s 100 Sexiest British Stars. She also came 18th for Best British Role Models for teenage girls in Britain according to Good Housekeeping Magazine. According to Forbes magazine, Saunders is the 26th most influential female British export. In 2005, she was named the 4th funniest woman in Britain in a poll of 4,000 women. To date, she has been nominated for and received many awards throughout her comedy career including;

Won

  • 1991: Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for TV Light Entertainment - French & Saunders
  • 1993: BAFTA Award for Best Comedy - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1993: Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award TV for Situation Comedy - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1994: International Emmy Award for popular arts - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 2002: Honorary Rose Award - Shared with: Dawn French
  • 2005: People's Choice Award for Best Movie Villain - Shrek 2

Nominated

  • 1993: BAFTA Award for Best Light Entertainment Performance - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1993: British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Actress - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1994: British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Actress - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1995: BAFTA Award for Best Comedy - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1996: BAFTA Award for Best Comedy - Absolutely Fabulous
  • 1997: BAFTA Award for Best Comedy - Absolutely Fabulous

Filmography

Television

Films

Bibliography

References

External links


The Comic Strip
Adrian Edmondson — Dawn French — Rik Mayall — Nigel Planer — Peter Richardson — Jennifer Saunders



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Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 09:12:45 PDT (GMT -0700)
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