Jennifer Saunders

Jennifer Jane Saunders (born 6 July 1958) is an English comedian, screenwriter, singer and actress. She has won three BAFTAs (including the BAFTA Fellowship), a British Comedy Award, a Rose d'Or Light Entertainment Festival Award, two Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards, and a People's Choice Award. Saunders first found attention in the 1980s when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. With her comedy partner Dawn French, she wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which she and French received a BAFTA fellowship in 2009. Saunders received acclaim through the early to mid-1990s for writing and playing the main character of Edina Monsoon in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. She has guest-starred in the American sitcoms Roseanne and Friends and won the People's Choice Awards for voicing the evil Fairy Godmother in DreamWorks' animated Shrek 2. In 2015, Saunders voiced Queen Elizabeth II in the animated comedy film Minions, and in 2016 she voiced Nana Noodleman in the animated musical film Sing.