Roseanne Barr

American comedian from a lower middle-class background who became a superstar comedienne on a popular TV series with the comment, "I am your worst nightmare. White trash with money." Early in her career, she went by the name Roseanne.

Raised Jewish in conservative Salt Lake City, she always felt on the fringe. She married Bill Pentland in 1974 and spent seven years in a trailer having three kids and gaining weight. She began doing comedy bits around Denver in the early '80s, worked the Comedy Store in Los Angeles in 1985 and appeared on an ABC-TV special in 1986, "Funny." With no pretence of class, she began with standup comedy as "a domestic goddess," playing coffeehouses and punk and biker bars. Her show off-camera is bluntly vulgar.

Roseanne rose rapidly to star in her own top TV sit-com, Roseanne, 1988, the story of a raucous family of a waitress, laborer husband and three smart-mouthed kids. The show ran for a nearly a decade with a concluding episode on 20 May 1997.

She left her first marriage after 16 years and took up with comic Tom Arnold whom she put on her show as story editor and some-time participant. They married on 20 January 1990 when he allegedly had kicked his coke habit; romping through their money and "mooning" in public as a lark. She and Tom caused a media fit in November 1992 when they announced that they were going to "marry" Kim Silva, 24, executive of their production company. The three of them were inseparable for a half-year, wearing the same clothes and showing off their menage-a-tois.

Rosie filed for divorce on 18 April 1994, accusing Tom of abuse, hitting, pinching, throwing things and verbal abuse. He denied it and they had screaming fights on the set. They reconciled but filed again on 13 May 1994.

Bodyguard Ben Thomas, 14-years-younger, became Roseanne's third husband on 14 February 1995, Stateline, Nevada; their son Buck was born on 5 August 1995.