Dad Morty Drescher and Fran Drescher Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Fran Drescher’s dad, Morty Drescher, has died at age 94, Us Weekly can confirm.
Fran, 66, was slated to accept an award at New York Women in Film & Television’s 44th annual Muse Awards for Vision and Achievement on Wednesday, March 27, but skipped the event due to her father’s death. One of her SAG-AFTRA colleagues accepted the honor on Fran’s behalf, with the star sending a message honoring Morty and apologizing for her absence.
The actress has been President of SAG-AFTRA since 2021, and presided over the union and handled negotiations during its historic strike last year, which lasted nearly four months.
Although Fran has not yet publicly addressed the personal loss, she spoke about her father’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease during a December 2023 essay for The Daily Beast.
“[He] has gone from once being a white-collar systems analyst and very athletic to, at 94, now being an invalid, barely able to transfer from bed to wheelchair or take a brief supervised walk with his walker,” she wrote.
Fran Drescher has come a long way since playing the “flashy girl from Flushing” on The Nanny. Drescher scored her breakout role in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever as supporting character Connie, who had a brief interaction with leading man John Travolta. While her performance was brief, Drescher soon landed starring roles in the likes of American Hot Wax, The Hollywood […]
The Nanny star then praised her mom, Sylvia Drescher, for taking such good care of Morty.
“Without question, the only reason he is still alive and has quality of life is because of my mother’s commitment to preserving that quality of life,” she penned, noting that her parents were “still madly in love” after 70 years of marriage.
“When he remembers something that she can’t, she praises him profusely on how smart he is. That’s what she was most attracted to about him,” Fran wrote, adding that her mom also praised Morty for maintaining a “full head of hair” and a “gorgeous face.”
After losing beloved stars including Barbara Walters, Kirstie Alley and Stephen “tWitch” Boss in the final days of 2022, the entertainment industry dealt with more loss in 2023. Hollywood mourned three significant losses in April: Jerry Springer, Harry Belafonte and Dancing With the Stars judge Len Goodman all died within days of his each other. […]
Fran previously opened up about how cannabis helped her father cope with the chronic degenerative disorder.
“He went from having that expressionless look that Parkinson’s patients often get where it’s kind of a dull life, to a positive reaction within seconds upon using cannabis,” she said during a 2018 interview with Forbes. “His whole face became animated, his voice became strong, his eyes opened up, and my dad was back to being himself.”
Morty made several appearances on The Nanny over the years, portraying both Fran’s fictional father, Morty Fine, and Fran’s uncle Stanley Fine. He also appeared on two episodes of the WB sitcom Living With Fran in 2005.
Many famous families have several actors in them — and some of those relatives have gone on to share the screen together. Siblings Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal were reluctant to costar in Donnie Darko before the 2001 film hit theaters. “Immediately, she was like, ‘Richard, you’re only offering this to me because I’m Jake’s big […]
More recently, Morty participated in the 2020 REELZ television special Fran Drescher: In My Own Words alongside Sylvia.
“My mom’s in her eighties, my dad just turned 90. I asked for all the footage because [they were interviewed] for hours. To have that for posterity, that alone was worth doing it,” Fran told TV Insider in 2020 of her parents’ participation in the film.
In addition to Sylvia and Fran, Morty is survived by another daughter, Fran’s older sister, Nadine Drescher.