Roseanne Barr

Roseanne Cherrie Barr (born November 3, 1952) is an Emmy Award-winning American comedian, actress and writer. At times in her career she has also been known as “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 by her maiden name, Roseanne Barr. She is currently a headliner at the Sahara Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. The eldest of four children, she was born in Salt Lake City, Utah to a working-class Jewish family. Her mother, Helen (née Davis), was a bookkeeper and cashier, and her father, Jerome Hershel “Jerry” Barr, worked in sales as a door-to-door salesman of household goods. Barr’s grandparents and great-grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania and Austria-Hungary, and her paternal grandfather changed his surname from “Borisofsky” to “Barr” upon entering the United States. Barr’s parents kept their Jewish heritage secret from their neighbors, and thus were partially involved in The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints, and Barr has stated that “Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning I was a Jew; Sunday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon, and Wednesday afternoon we were Mormons”; her Jewish upbringing was influenced by her devoutly Orthodox Jewish maternal grandmother. Roseanne became famous in the early 1980s with her stand-up comedy routine, receiving critical acclaim for her unglamorized portrayal of the typical American working-class housewife. In her routine she coined the now well-known phrase, “domestic goddess,” to refer to a homemaker or housewife. The success of her act led to her own series on ABC, called Roseanne. The show ran from 1988 to 1997, and co-starred Emmy winners Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman. Roseanne herself also won an Emmy for her part in the show. For the final season Roseanne earned $650,000 an episode. In 1997, after the end of her sitcom’s run, she portrayed the Wicked Witch of the West in a production of The Wizard of Oz at Madison Square Garden. She went on to host her own talk show, The Roseanne Show which ran for two years. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy, touring the world. 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. She also released her first kids’ DVD, Rockin’ with Roseanne: Calling All Kids, that same month.Roseanne’s return to the stage culminated in an HBO Comedy Special Roseanne Barr: Blonde N Bitchin’, which aired November 4, 2006, on HBO. It has been rumored that Roseanne will return to television and ABC with a recurring role on season 5 of Desperate Housewives.