Rosie O'Donnell

For six years, Rosie O'Donnell was America's best friend. For an hour each day she served as host and executive producer of the critically acclaimed and Emmy Award winning nationally syndicated talk/variety series The Rosie O'Donnell Show. In her first season on the air, she won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host. Rosie made her dramatic television debut in CBS's Hallmark Hall of Fame production, Riding the Bus with My Sister, and has made guest appearances on Will and Grace, All My Children, Suddenly Susan, Spin City, Sesame Street, The Nanny, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Nip/Tuck, Queer as Folk, Happily Divorced, Bomb Girls, and Showtime's Web Therapy. O'Donnell has also executive produced and hosted Stand Up Spotlight on VH1, and hosted Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards from 1997–2003. On the big screen, O'Donnell has starred in A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Another Stakeout, The Flintstones, Exit To Eden, Now and Then, Beautiful Girls, Harriet the Spy, Wide Awake , and was the voice of Turk in Walt Disney's Tarzan. Rosie starred as Rizzo in Tommy Tune's 1994 revival of Grease. Her other stage credits include the Broadway productions of Seussical and Fiddler on the Roof, Love, Loss and What I Wore, and the Encores! production of No, No, Nanette. In 2004, Rosie combined her love of Broadway with 80's pop musical sensation, Boy George and produced the musical, Taboo, based on his life. She established the Rosie's For All Kids Foundation, in 1997. Since its inception, the foundation has raised more than $60 million and awarded more than $27 million dollars in grants to over 1,400 child-related non-profit organizations to benefit low income families across the country. In 2005, Rosie established a fund to provide $3 million dollars to children and families displaced by Katrina which, among other projects built the first-ever childcare facility in a FEMA housing site, at Renaissance Village in Louisiana. In 2003, Rosie established Rosie's Theater Kids, a program that provides free in-school, after-school and summer instruction in musical theater to the public school children of New York. In February 2009, Rosie's Theater Kids opened the door to its new home, Maravel Arts Center, a performing arts school in the heart of New York City's theater district.