Profile of Rosie O'Donnell on Famous Like Me

Roseanne Teresa O'Donnell (born March 21, 1962) is a lesbian Irish-American comedian, actress, and talk show host.

She was born in Commack, New York (Long Island) to Edward J. O'Donnell, an Irish Catholic immigrant, and American-born Roseann Murtha, who was also of Irish Catholic descent. Her brother, Daniel O'Donnell, is a member of the New York legislature and is also a homosexual.

Biography

Rosie O'Donnell attended Dickinson College and furthered her education in Boston, Massachusetts. Later O'Donnell began her acting career doing stand-up comedy around the East Coast, and was soon cast as "Maggie O'Brien" on the sitcom Gimme a Break. Her heavy-set appearance and tomboyish, husky New York accent stood her apart from other actresses and comediennes. She hosted the VH1 stand-up comedy series Stand-Up Spotlight in the late 1980s. Eventually, she was cast as the lead in her own sitcom in 1992, called Stand by Your Man. It was quickly cancelled from lack of viewers.

In the early 1990s, O'Donnell starred in a string of comedy films including A League of Their Own, Another Stakeout, and Sleepless in Seattle. She was highly acclaimed for her performances, but quickly lost that popularity after appearing in a string of flops in the mid 1990s such as Car 54, Where Are You? and Anne Rice's Exit to Eden. Her popularity then rose again as she took roles in less commercially successful but highly acclaimed films like Now and Then, Beautiful Girls, and the family movie Harriet the Spy. In 1996 she was given her own daytime talk show, called, appropriately enough, The Rosie O'Donnell Show. The show proved extremely successful as O'Donnell was dubbed "The Queen of Nice." Having all manner of entertainment performers on her show, she also brought on various charitable projects, earning millions of dollars for various charities.

Children's charities were a clear favorite of O'Donnell, and she began to adopt children to raise, eventually adopting four. During the late 1990s, she limited her movie appearances to cameos, although she appeared in several gay-themed films. This led to tabloid speculation that O'Donnell was a lesbian.

In 2000, O'Donnell partnered with the publishers of McCall's to revamp the magazine as Rosie's McCall's (or, more commonly, Rosie). Rather than cover the magazine with thin models and fill it with stories about how to be more beautiful, she opted for stories about depression, breast cancer, and foster care. In this, she continued her tradition of standing up for her beliefs.

In 2002, O'Donnell decided to stop working on her talk show, favoring a return to stand-up comedy. The talk show was then hosted by comedienne Caroline Rhea (The Caroline Rhea Show), but it only lasted one more season. Just before quitting, O'Donnell proved rumors to be true when she came out of the closet as a lesbian. Within the gay community this was common knowledge, and the tabloids had been hinting at it. She had various reasons for doing so, including the need to put a familiar and beloved face with homosexuality, but her primary reason was more important: as a lesbian adoptive mother (with a long-time lover) she was infuriated that adoption agencies, particularly in Florida, were refusing adoptive rights to able and loving gay parents. She hoped to educate viewers around the world on this subject.

After leaving her show and coming out, O'Donnell underwent an image change. She returned to stand-up comedy, and within her first few shows made fun of various celebrities (among them Michael Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Winona Ryder, and Joan Rivers). She also received what was considered by many to be an unflattering, somewhat masculine haircut (remniscent of Cyndi Lauper's hair in the 1980s.) The tabloid press again picked up on her life, claiming that she had abandoned the "queen of nice" image. O'Donnell pointed out that her stand-up routine had always been very political and abrasive, and that her haircut was a personal choice. She eventually claimed that she had cut her hair in imitation of Boy George, in hopes that he would allow her to produce his stage show Taboo in the United States. If that was the true motive, she was successful, although the show was not, with a failed run on Broadway.)

In 2002 O'Donnell also published a novel entitled Find Me. The book was partially autobiographical but mostly centered on O'Donnell's relationship with a schizophrenic woman who posed as a teen who had become pregnant through rape. The book was uniformly praised by critics but did not achieve high sales.

In late 2003, O'Donnell entered into a massive legal battle with the publishers of Rosie magazine. They claimed that the fall of the magazine (and its eventual shutdown) was due to O'Donnell's uncooperative (and allegedly rude and violent) behavior at the magazine's offices. They claimed that by removing herself from the magazine's publication, she was in breach of contract. O'Donnell claimed that there was no way she could conscionably continue to be a part of the magazine because they were steering away from her vision and demanding content with which she did not agree.

The trial received massive press coverage. O'Donnell would often give brief press interviews outside of the courtroom responding to various allegations. Of note was a former magazine colleague who testified that O'Donnell said to her on the phone that "people who lie die of cancer." Ultimately the judge ruled against both sides and dismissed the case.

On February 26, 2004, O'Donnell married her partner Kelli Carpenter, a former Nickelodeon marketing executive in San Francisco, some two weeks after the mayor, Gavin Newsom began granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her decision to marry Carpenter came after O'Donnell blasted President Bush over his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. The license was later voided by the California Supreme Court.

In December 2004, O'Donnell began maintaining a weblog at onceadored.blogspot.com with the title formerlyrosie, until it moved to Rosie.com in April 2005. Rosie used her blog to give away tickets to her broadway show, Fiddler on the Roof, because she wanted to spread her love of Broadway to a wider audience.

In 2005, while promoting her TV movie Riding the Bus with My Sister, O'Donnell claimed that Kirstie Alley was much heavier than her touted "210 lbs." (95 kg) and that she "wasn't being honest about her weight".

O'Donnell and Carpenter are currently operating R. Family Vacations, a travel company focused toward gay and lesbian families. They have already launched a cruise ship that took homosexual families from New York to the Bahamas. O'Donnell continues to entertain and remains a popular pop culture icon, and an important celebrity representative of the gay and lesbian community. Rosie and her family now divide their time in homes on the Hudson River in South Nyack, New York and in southern Florida.

Return to Film

Rosie O'Donnell returned to films in 2005 with her self-produced TV movie Riding the Bus with My Sister. Her performance, as a mentally retarded Beth Smith, was acclaimed by critics and put her on the short list for the 2006 Emmy Award nominations for Best Actress in a TV Motion Picture or Miniseries. She expressed doubts during filming that this role may 'typecast her forever' in mentally retarded roles, which until this point, she had avoided.

TV Work

• Gimme a Break! (cast member from 1986–1987)
• Stand-Up Spotlight (1988–1991)
• Stand by Your Man (1992) (canceled after 2 months)
• The Rosie O'Donnell Show (1996–2002) (also producer and executive producer)
• The Twilight of the Golds (1997)
• Jackie's Back! (1999) (cameo)
• Riding the Bus with My Sister (2005) (also executive producer)

Theatre Work

• Grease (1994)
• Seussical (2001) (replacement for David Shriner)
• Fiddler on the Roof (2004) (replacement for Andrea Martin in 2005)

Filmography

• A League of Their Own (1992)
• Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
• Another Stakeout (1993)
• Fatal Instinct (1993)
• Car 54, Where Are You? (1994)
• I'll Do Anything (1994)
• The Flintstones (1994)
• Exit to Eden (1994)
• Now and Then (1995)
• Beautiful Girls (1995)
• Harriet the Spy (1996)
• A Very Brady Sequel (1996) (Cameo)
• Wide Awake (1998)
• Get Bruce (1999) (documentary)
• Tarzan (1999) (voice)
• The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000) (voice only)
• Artists and Orphans: A True Drama (2001) (short subject) (narrator)
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) (Cameo)
• Last Party 2000 (2001) (documentary)
• The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch (2005) (documentary)
• Show Business (2005) (documentary)
• Pursuit of Equality (2005) (documentary)
• Untitled Rosie O'Donnell Documentary (2005) (documentary) (also executive producer)(currently filming)

Bibliography

• Find Me (2002)

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Rosie O'Donnell