Rosie O'Donnell
Roseann "Rosie" O'Donnell is an eleven-time Emmy Award-winning American comedian, television talk show host, author, and film, television, and stage actress. She has also been magazine editor and continues to be a celebrity blogger, LGBT civil rights activist, television producer and collaborative partner in the LGBT family vacation company R Family Vacations.
Raised Irish Catholic, O'Donnell lost her mother to cancer as a pre-teen and has consistently stressed values of protecting children and supporting families throughout her career. O'Donnell started her comedy career while still a teenager and her big break was on the talent show Star Search. A TV sitcom and a series of movies introduced the comic to a wider audience and in 1996 she started hosting The Rosie O'Donnell Show which won multiple Emmy awards.
During her years on The Rosie O'Donnell Show she wrote her first book, a memoir called Find Me and developed a reputation for being "the queen of nice" as well as a reputation for charitable philanthropy. She used the book's $3 million advance to establish her own For All Kids foundation and promoted numerous other charity schemes and projects encouraging other celebrities on her show to also take part. O'Donnell came out officially as a "dyke" two months before finishing her talk show run, she cited her primary reason was to bring attention to gay adoption issues. O'Donnell is a foster — and adoptive — mother. She has since continued to support many LGBT causes and issues.
In 2006 O'Donnell became the new moderator on The View boosting ratings and attracting controversies with her more liberal views and strong personality arguably dominating many of the conversations. She became a polarizing figure to many conservatives and her strong opinions resulted in several notable controversies including an on-air dispute regarding The Bush administration's policies with the war in Iraq resulting in her pre-maturely ending her contract. In 2007 O'Donnell also released her second memoir, Celebrity Detox, which focuses on her struggles with fame and her time at The View. She continues to do charity work and remains focused on LGBT and family-related issues.
“I am difficult to love, and I know it. I never learned the unconditional part, so trust evades me. Add sex and I fall apart, eventually retreating back into the swamp. Very few people can put up with me, and I can't blame them. I am a constant contradiction. I annoy myself.”
“At times of great emotion, good or bad, I find I am gone, somewhere else, watching it happen to me, a different me. I miss a lot of my own life, my own moments, because I step outside myself. I feel it all more in retrospect than in actual time.”
“Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, and it can seem lovely, and at other times absurd, all this verbiage, these seemingly random consonants clattering on the string that is sound.”
“Fame stole my yellow. Yellow is the color you get when you're real and brutally honest. Yellow is with my kids[...]The bundle of bright yellow warming my core, formerly frozen and uninhabitable[...]They got yellow from me, and I felt yellow giving it to them and it was all good[...]So, why am I leaving my show? It took my yellow. I wanted it back. Without it I can't live. The gray kills me.”
“I act irrationally, I defy the odds, I engage when others would run. I look for trouble, I seek chaos, it is a burden.”
“Maybe compassion is compulsion, creativity is insanity. If this is so, then is craziness a good thing, the source of our humanity?”
“Nothing happens by chance.”
“I'd always admired writers. I'd always loved words on a page. Somehow, words seemed to bypass image and get straight to the heart of things. Somehow, words seemed big enough to contain pain, and sentences could pull broken bits together.”
“I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.”