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Dawn French has been dubbed Britain's first lady of television comedy, resulting from the success of her wildly popular, international Emmy-winning BBC sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley, created by Richard Curtis (Notting Hill, Bean, Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral). French hails from Holyhead, Wales. She trained to be a drama teacher at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, where she met another of England's most popular comediennes, Jennifer Saunders (Shrek 2, Absolutely Fabulous). That fateful meeting led to one of the most successful partnerships in British comedy today: French and Saunders, a pairing that began onstage at the Comic Strip in London's Soho district and has survived over two decades. A few years later, they began appearing together on the BBC variety show Entertainers, were featured in the sitcom Happy Families, and wrote their first sitcom, Girls on Top (1985), in which they starred with another little-known comedienne, Tracey Ullman. They also appeared in numerous episodes of the longrunning BBC series The Comic Strip Presents.

French also played the lead role in Murder Most Horrid, has starred in a variety of advertising campaigns, was the face of television advertising for Terry's Chocolate Orange and has been featured on a number of spoken recordings of children's stories, notably for Mick Inkpen's Kipper series. French has starred in such BBC Screen One dramas as Tender Loving Care and Sex and Chocolate. Other British TV appearances include vocalizing the title character of Pongwiffy, Wild West, the voice of Buttercup in Watership Down, David Copperfield, Ted and Alice, Comic Relief and Let Them Eat Cake. She has also been featured on the big screen in The Adventures of Pinocchio and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which she appears as the Lady in the Painting.