Roseanne Barr is an Emmy Award-winning actress, talk-show host, and comedian. Over that career, Roseanne has also received several People's Choice Awards, Golden Globes, a Peabody and an American Comedy Award.

 Roseanne was born in Salt Lake City in 1952 to a working-class Jewish family. She was the eldest of four children. After dropping out of high school, she moved to a Colorado hippie commune. There she met Bill Pentland. They married in 1973 and moved to Denver where they had three children. As the couple struggled financially, Roseanne began working at a restaurant as a dishwasher and waitress. Impressed by her quick, caustic wit friends suggested she try the local stand-up comedy scene in Denver. As she began performing on stage, Roseanne developed a stand-up act with a unique take the typical working-class housewife that would lead her to coin the popular catch phrase, domestic goddess. By 1983 Roseanne was one of the most popular stand-up comics working the Denver comedy scene and decided to make the move to LA. In LA, she befriended Louie Anderson and Sam Kinison who encouraged her to audition for Mitzi Shore at the Comedy Store. She was instantly made a Comedy Store regular and even asked to appear on George Schlatter's ABC-TV special, Funny that same night. Soon after, while rehearsing for a show, a Tonight Show talent scout approached her. In 1985, she made her first of many appearances on the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.

In 1987, HBO offered her a show of her own, On Location: The Roseanne Barr Show. Though the show was short lived, it was an important stepping stone in the evolution to her popular sitcom. A year later, Roseanne landed her own sitcom which aired ABC from 1988 to 1997. The show portrayed a working-class family struggling to get by on a limited income. The sitcom often tackled poverty, alcoholism, drugs, sex, obesity, feminism, domestic violence, and homosexuality with an honesty that reminded many viewers of classic sitcoms like All in the Family. As Roseanne put it, she helped fill a void that other sitcoms of the time had left wide open. As a result, The Roseanne Show ran for eight seasons. During its first season it even overtook the former number one sitcom, the widely popular Cosby Show.

In 1993, Roseanne was awarded an Emmy as Best Actress in a Comedy Series. She was also named Best Actress in a Comedy Series at the American Television Awards. In addition to these honors, the series was honored with a Peabody Award, one of the most prestigious awards in broadcasting.

Toward the show's final seasons many changes took place in Roseanne's personal life. During the show's run, Roseanne fell in love with fellow cast member, Tom Arnold. Because of this, she divorced her first husband Pentland after 16 years of marriage. But her marriage to Arnold would be short-lived. The couple filed for what would eventually become a very bitter divorce after only four years. Roseanne alleged domestic violence. Around this time, she also stated in a 1991 interview with People magazine that she was also physically and sexually abused as a child. Both her siblings and parents denied the charges.

As ratings for the Roseanne show declined, Roseanne married her third husband Benjamin Thomas, her bodyguard. Despite renewing their wedding vows in1999, that couple's fate was also doomed. They filed for divorce in 2003 after Roseanne claimed Thomas was an abusive binge drinker who threatened to kidnap their son. After their divorce, Roseanne began studying a form of Jewish mysticism called the Kabbalah. Two years later, she ended the feud with her parents and siblings and went back to being billed as Roseanne Barr.

Roseanne went on to host her own talk show, The Roseanne Show. Despite praise from the Village Voice and claims that art students would be watching the show for the next ten years, Roseanne's talk show was canceled after only two years. So, in 2003, she tried again, taking on the dual role of hosting a cooking show and starring in a reality show about hosting that cooking show. Ironically, both shows ended abruptly after a bout with food poisoning and an emergency appendectomy.

 In 2004 Comedy Central named Roseanne Barr the ninth greatest stand-up comedian of all time. Only a year later, she returned to her roots in stand-up comedy. By February of 2006, Roseanne performed her first live dates in Europe as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival. She followed that with her HBO Special Roseanne Barr: Blonde N Bitchin'. Next, she appeared on Comic Relief 2006 to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina. That same year, she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.