who plays Rachel's mom

why does the audience start clapping when Rachel's mom makes an appearance? who is she? she looks familiar.

It is Marlo Thomas, an actress famous for her role in an old sitcom, "That Girl." She has a very recognizable face.

"DANNY D'ADDARIO" wrote in message news:[email]...

In a previous letter, someone said, if I am not mistaken, that they were 99% sure that Marlo Thomas was Jewish. I am not sure if her mother was/is Jewish, but her father, famed comedian/comedic actor Danny Thomas, was Lebanese.

Marlo Thomas is famous for a lot of reasons, all of them good. First, she played the lead in a late-60s sitcom, *That Girl*, which was ground-breaking for women's roles, including *The Mary Tyler Moore Show* and *Murphy Brown*. She has been married for quite a while to Phil Donahue, whom Oprah Winfrey owes a lot to. He is an all-round good guy. She does a lot of work for something I believe was started by her dad, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. She works hard to promote self-esteem in children, especially girls. Re-runs of her sitcom still inspire girls to dream of lives of independent accomplishment. She is 61 years old. DR-- http://home.earthlink.net/~daritarose/ Home is where the heart is No matter how the heart lives Inside your heart, where love is That's where you've got to make yourself At home --Sally Fingerett