Genie Francis

Genie Francis is an American actress born on May 26, 1960, in Lunenberg, Massachusetts. She is best known for her role as Laura Spencer on General Hospital, where she starred opposite Anthony Geary as Luke. The onscreen wedding of Luke and Laura in 1981 drew over 30 million viewers, making it the highest-rated hour in soap opera history. She left the show for a time to star in her own series, Bare Essence, which was unsuccessful. While working on that series in 1982, she met Jonathan Frakes, her future husband. She returned to General Hospital in 1983 for a limited run.

Genie comes from an acting family. Her father, Ivor Francis, was a Canadian actor, and her mother, Rosemary Daley, was a former actress and model of Lithuanian descent. She has an older brother, Ivor Jr., a younger brother, Kenneth, and an older half-sister, Shelby, from her father's first marriage. Genie began her acting career on the TV show Family in a two-part story called "Jury Duty." She was once offered the lead role in the film Splash, but turned it down because she thought the script seemed too silly. She also owned a store called The Cherished Home, which sold cottage furniture and home accessories. She sold the store in 2002 due to her workload on The Young and the Restless. In May 2007, she began appearing in magazine ads for the Medifast Diet and claimed to have lost 30 pounds by December of that year.