Roseanne Barr

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Lifestyle

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Family

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. It was Rosie's fifth child as she had given up a daughter born out of wedlock when she was 18, reuniting with her in 1989. In April 1989, her 14-year-old daughter Jessica entered rehab for drinking. In late 1991 Rosie had breast reduction surgery with three lbs taken off her bosom. She had a nose trim in July 1992 and a tummy tuck in December 1992. Her cosmetic surgeon sculpted her face. She published two autobiographies, the first on 30 August 1989 and the second, My Lives, in 1994. She claims to have been a victim of child abuse and incest, and thrives on controversy and chaos. In January 1998, she called the cops to throw Ben out of the house, claiming that he had trashed her home on New Year's Eve and threatened to kill her if she did not have sex with him. As he continued visiting their son, they began appearing together in public in the next few months. In May 1998 Roseanne put down $7.9 million for a new mansion in the heart of Beverly Hills. Her third marriage came to an end after seven years when she filed divorce papers on 4 March 2002, citing irreconcilable differences. She has requested full custody of their six-year-old son, Buck, with visitation rights for Thomas. n 2002, Barr met Johnny Argent online after running a writing competition on her blog and began dating him in 2003, after a year of phone conversations. They live on a 46-acre macadamia nut farm located on the Big Island of Hawaii. Barr purchased the property in 2007 for $1.78 million. Barr has studied Kabbalah at the Kabbalah Centre and frequently comments on the discipline. In 2003, to re-vamp her crude, loud-mouthed image, Barr wanted to return to television in a softer role. A documentary, The Real Roseanne, was created to precede her new lifestyle and cooking show, Domestic Goddess scheduled for a September 2003 debut. Both shows, however,were cancelled. On top of this double wallop, Barr underwent a hysterectomy. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour. In 2011, she starred in an unscripted TV show, Roseanne's Nuts, that lasted from July to September of that year, about her life on a Hawaiian farm. In early 2012, Barr announced her candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Green Party. Barr lost the nomination to Jill Stein. She then sought the presidential nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party, which she won on 4 August 2012. Barr received 61,971 votes in the general election, placing sixth overall. In 2015, Barr revealed she has been diagnosed with both macular degeneration and glaucoma, and thus is gradually losing her eyesight and expects to eventually go blind; she is consuming medical marijuana to fight the raised intraocular pressure that is a feature of these diseases. Link to Wikipedia biography