​Frances Chewning is an actor and creator based in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California. 

Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, her love of learning earned her an academic scholarship to Lawrence University where she majored in philosophy. While there, she studied voice at their music conservatory (becoming the first non-major to have a senior recital), threw herself into every theater opportunity available, and hosted a college radio show that combined comedy with Indian classical music called "Shazam! It's Raga!" Immediately following graduation from Lawrence, she entered an acting MFA program at Harvard's Institute for Advanced Theater Training, a program run jointly by the American Repertory Theater and the Moscow Art Theater School and founded by Robert Brustein. In her final year there, she was cast in a lead role in the A.R.T's world premiere of Adam Rapp's Animals & Plants, winning praise from theater critics.

Upon graduation she moved to New York City where she pounded the pavement, acting in short films, numerous off-off-Broadway productions, and workshops of new plays and musicals. She created a comedy webseries with fellow Harvard alum Hannah Bos (HBO's Somebody, Somewhere) and filmmaker (and now husband) Jeff Maksym that led to comedy club bookings and attention from producers in Los Angeles. Additionally she started a film collective with Jeff and several other young Brooklyn filmmakers including writer/director Nathan Silver (Between The Temples). 

Some of her favorite NYC performances were as Jo Britten in the TimeOut New York "critic's pick" revival of James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in the multi-disciplinary company Vision Into Art's A Hard Line, Ophelia in small production of Hamlet that was featured in The New York Times, and all of the new work she got to bring to life at the renowned Lark Play Development Center.

In Los Angeles, she dove into comedy, taking improv at UCB-LA, hosting a long-running improv show with her team Flash Garden and performing at L.A.'s legendary Cavern Club Theater in comedic musical spoofs such as "Little Town on the Prairie-Oke" and "I Totally Know What You Did Last Donna Summer." She started working in commercials and on TV with credits including Hulu's Welcome to Chippendale's (as Sally Jessy Raphael), Ryan Murphy's Monster on Netflix. And she delved deeper into filmmaking.

She wrote and co-directed the short film The Glasses (2023), a heartfelt dramedy based on her personal experience with her father's Parkinson's disease, which was an Official Selection at Palm Springs ShortFest and HollyShorts among other festivals. Next she wrote and directed the award-winning The Pic (2025), a short screwball romantic comedy about motherhood, romance, and communication (missed and otherwise). It premiered at HollyShorts in Los Angeles and is currently on its festival run. It won an Audience Favorite award at the San Jose International Short Film Festival.

Her diverse body of work reflects her delight in storytelling in its many forms -- through comedy, theater, music, and film, she loves to create connection and a bit of magic.