Genie Francis

A 14-year-old Genie Francis was sitting in her 8th grade algebra class when she found out she’d booked the role that shot her to unprecedented fame, including the covers of Newsweek and People and a viewing audience of 30 million for her character’s 1981 wedding. The part, of course, was that of Laura Webber on General Hospital. Born in New Jersey to parents who were both actors, Francis had only appeared on one other television show (Family, in 1976) before making her GH debut in 1977. Her character’s romantic pairings with Scotty Baldwin, then with Luke Spencer, helped to make her a soap superstar. In 2007, Francis won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her work as Laura, adding to her pair of Soap Opera Digest Awards (the 1997 statuette for Outstanding Lead Actress and a 1981 prize for Outstanding Actress.

Francis departed the show in 1982 and made visits in 1983 and 1984 before returning from 1993-2002. After short-term runs in 2006, 2008 and 2013, the actress came back again in 2015. Outside of GH, Francis’s credits include stints on Days of Our Lives as Diana Colville, All My Children as Ceara Connor and Young and Restless as Genevieve Atkinson, plus the role of Brett Main Hazard in the miniseries North and South. It was on that project that she met her husband, actor/director Jonathan Frakes, with whom she has two children, Jameson and Elizabeth.