MALIBU, Calif. – These VHS tapes may be from a bygone era, but that iconic voice is timeless. 

“The gift that keeps on giving. It’s still beloved worldwide,” Fran Drescher said about The Nanny. 

Drescher rose to fame playing the mischievous nanny in the Sheffield home of the beloved 1990s sitcom. 

“All different nationalities, races, and ages. It was just one of those anomalies,” she said. 

Then in the last year of the show, she started feeling sick. 

“Cramping after sex, leg pain, my breasts felt sore,” she said. “The following year I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. That sort of changed my life and the direction I thought I was going,” she said. 

Because from that point on, her humanitarianism took a front seat in her life.

After getting misdiagnosed numerous times, she would make it her life’s mission to help other people battling the disease.

“I was very frustrated by all of this, and angry and bitter and decided to write a book, but then I realized it happens to millions of Americans. The reason we lose loved ones is almost always due to late stage diagnoses and often misdiagnoses in the early stages,” she said.

And so she started a non-profit, Cancer Schmancer – with a goal of saving lives by transforming the nation’s current sick care system into one that focuses on health care. They advocate for three things: prevention, early detection and policy change.  

“We’re very diligent about empowering and motivating people to connect how you live with how you feel. A lot of the disease is primarily because of a highly toxic environment we’re living in,” she said.

The organization has initiatives where they educate people on how to identify and eliminate the causes of cancer in their everyday lives. 

Cancer Schmancer was also key in getting the Gynecological Cancer Education Cancer and Awareness Act passed, the first of its kind. It provides for programs to increase the awareness and knowledge of women and health care providers when it comes to gynecologic cancers.

Drescher was named one of the "Top 5 Celebrity Lobbyists" by Washingtonian Magazine, calling her a prime mover behind passage of cancer-awareness legislation. 

“It’s my duty to sound the alarm. I got famous, I got cancer, and I lived to talk about it,” she said. 

And so now she uses that famous voice in front of a different audience