Frances Bay Filmography

Frances Bay was a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky, elderly women on film and television. She began her acting career in her mid-50s. Bay was born Frances Goffman in Mannville, Alberta to a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant father, Max Goffman, and his wife, Ann , and raised in Dauphin, Manitoba. Her younger brother was the noted sociologist Erving Goffman. Before World War II she acted professionally in Winnipeg and spent the war hosting the Canadian Broadcasting Company's radio show, Everybody's Program, aimed at service members overseas. She married and moved... to Cape Town, South Africa, living in the Constantia and Camps Bay areas. She studied with Uta Hagen at this time. Charles and Frances Bay had one son, Josh , who died at the age of 23. Soon after the death of her husband in 2002, she was struck by a car in Glendale, California, and as a result she had to have part of her right leg amputated. She was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame on September 6, 2008, in large part thanks to a petition with 10,000 names which was submitted on her behalf.
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