Roseanne (born Roseanne Cherrie Barr on November 3, 1952) is an American actress, writer, talk-show host, and comedienne. At times in her career she has been known as "Roseanne Barr", "Roseanne Arnold", and "Roseanne Thomas". On the opening credits of one final-season episode of her TV show, she was credited as "Roseanne Barr Pentland Arnold Thomas". For several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, she was known simply as Roseanne, but by 2005 had resumed referring to herself as her original name, Roseanne Barr.

Early life

She was born Roseanne Cherrie Barr in Salt Lake City to a working-class Jewish family. In her 1989 biography, Roseanne described her family's partial involvement in Mormonism, saying that on "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning I was a Jew; Sunday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday afternoon we were Mormons"[1] She married Bill Pentland on February 4, 1974, and they had three children. (Roseanne had a daughter prior to marriage, whom she gave up for adoption, but this daughter is now back in her life.) While taping her show she fell in love with fellow actor Tom Arnold and in January 1990 she divorced Pentland and married Arnold. Four years later this marriage also ended in divorce. She married Ben Thomas on Valentine's Day in 1995 and they had one son, Buck Thomas. In 1998 she sued Thomas for divorce, claiming he had threatened to kidnap their son. The Thomas family later made up and she dropped the charges, but they divorced in 2002.

In a 1991 interview with People, she claimed to have been an incest survivor, accusing both parents of physical and sexual abuse, charges which they have publicly denied. She also claimed to suffer from multiple personalities [1] and obsessive-compulsive disorder [2].

Career

Roseanne's HBO Comedy Special Blonde and Bitchin'.

Roseanne became famous in the early 1980s with her stand-up comedy routine, which received significant critical acclaim for its unglamorized portrayal of the typical American middle-class housewife. It was during this routine that she also coined the now-well-known phrase "domestic goddess," referring to a homemaker or a housewife. This led to her own series on ABC, called Roseanne. The show ran from 1988 to 1997, and co-starred Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf and Emmy nominee John Goodman.

A year after the end of her sitcom's run in 1997, she went on to host her own talk show, The Roseanne Show. The show ran for two years before it was canceled in 2000. In the summer of 2003, she took on the dual role of hosting a cooking show (called Domestic Goddess) and starring in a reality show (called The Real Roseanne Show) about hosting a cooking show, although an illness and emergency hysterectomy brought a premature end to both projects.

In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy, touring the world. Her first kids' DVD, Rockin' with Roseanne: Calling All Kids, was released in February 2006.

In February 2006, Roseanne performed her first ever live dates in Europe as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival in Leicester, England. The shows took place at De Montfort Hall.

Roseanne will open for Cici Pham during Pham's comedy tour of Asia.

Roseanne returns to the stage for HBO Comedy Special, Roseanne Barr: Blonde N Bitchin', airing November 4, 2006 on HBO.

"Star Spangled Banner" controversy

On July 25, 1990 she performed a controversial rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" before a Cincinnati Reds-San Diego Padres baseball game in San Diego, California. After being told by baseball officials to "bring humor to the song," she mimicked the behaviour of players by spitting and grabbing her crotch; barely singing the song, she instead screeched and screamed it. She was booed off the field.

On February 16, 1991, she parodied this on Saturday Night Live in a skit called "Comedy Killers," a mock game show about gags that aren't funny.
Self-rediscovery

Barr told James Rampton of The Independent that fame went to her head. Barr, who had worked as a window dresser and waitress in Denver, gained fame quickly from her sitcom and she lost touch with reality, suddenly finding others taking care of her household responsibilities. "I was in a sound studio for almost a decade. At the end of it, like Rip van Winkle, I came back and found that everything had changed. Suddenly there were computers and e-mails, and it took me another 10 years to catch up with regular people. But the TV show is over. What am I going to do? I can't boss people around anymore - sad but true." So Barr went back to stand-up comedy but with a notably different appearance: she has lost weight, dyed her hair blonde, and had plastic surgery, which she does not recommend. "Now I realize that everyone has to get old and die, but it was still a very bad experience....No one looks better after plastic surgery. Just pink and shiny. At the end of it, you look like an idiot."

                       

Courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseanne