Genie Francis

About Genie Francis

Eugenia Ann "Genie" Francis was born in Lunenberg, MA on May 26, 1962 (an alternate source says Englewood, NJ). She is an American actress best known for her role as Laura Spencer on General Hospital, directly opposite "Luke" during the "Luke and Laura years" when that was seemingly all anyone ever talked about. (They married onscreen 17 November 1981, AFTER his highly-popular "rape" of her that still divides opinion today. Go figure.) This bit of RE-casting was so serendipitous that the true story of her actually rubbing a genii's bottle just beforehand deserves to be told here. (And now it has.) Essentially, the role catapulted her to instant stardom, with over 30 million viewers tuning in for the nuptials, the highest-rated hour in soap opera history.) She left the series to try her own luck in popular television, scoring her own series Bare Essence, which was unsuccessful. (Ha-ha!) However, she did meet there her future husband, Jonathan Frakes, who is marginally well known in his own right from some little science fiction franchise or other he once starred in. This was in 1982, and she returned to General Hospital in 1983 for a limited run.

Trivia: She was once offered the lead role in SPLASH, but turned it down because the script seemed too silly to her. (Excellent call, future has-been!)

Genie comes from an acting family: her father, Ivor (I'm not making that up) was a Canadian actor (which probably explains why you've never heard of him) and her mother, Rosemary Daley, was a former actress and model of Lithuanan descent (need I elaborate?) She has an older brother, Ivor Jr. (not making that up, either) and a younger brother, Kenneth, as well as an older half-sister, Shelby, from Ivor Senior's first marriage.

She owned a store for a time, called The Cherished Home. It sold cottage furniture and home accessories, doing part of its business online, but she sole it in 2002 due to her workload on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS.

She began appearing in magazine ads for the Medifast Diet in May of 2007 and claimed to have lost 30 pounds as of December of that year. A likely tale!

She first began "real" acting on the TV show FAMILY, in a 2-part story called "Jury Duty."


(To Be Continued, should I decide I find her interesting enough)

SOURCES: bodysize.org, wikipedia