Sandra Bernhard

An acerbic, self-deprecating and full-lipped (think Mick Jagger or Aerosmith's Steven Tyler) renaissance woman, Sandra Bernhard has offered cutting-edge social commentary since beginning humbly at an open-mike night at Ye Little Club in Beverly Hills in 1975. At the time she was a manicurist to the stars, a vocation she practiced for six years before her comedy stylings enabled her to give up her day job for good. She had made her feature debut in "Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams" (19981), but it was her over-the-top turn as the obsessively neurotic groupie who attempts to kidnap Jerry Lewis in Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy" (1983) that brought her to public prominence.

Managing to upstage not only Lewis but also the film's lead Robert De Niro, Bernhard set a standard she has yet to equal on the large screen, though she has garnered much subsequent acclaim for her outrageous live performances and television appearances (like dropping her pants on E! Entertainment's "Howard Stern") not to mention her 1991 PLAYBOY spread and a run as a Ford model.

Bernhard's eclectic, confrontational and largely autobiographical one-woman stage show, "Without You I'm Nothing," was a smash off-Broadway in 1988 but sputtered at the box office in its 1990 screen rendition. A regular performer on TV stand-up comedy specials, she ventured into the land of sitcoms with a six-year (1991-96) recurring role as a married woman who came out as a lesbian on the hit ABC sitcom "Roseanne," offering perhaps her most mainstream exposure to date.

Bernhard kept her profile high with guest turns on shows like "Chicago Hope" (CBS) and "Ally McBeal" (Fox) and as host of Comedy Central's "The A-List" (1992-93) and the USA Network's "Reel Wild Cinema with Sandra Bernhard" (1996), but her career seemed stalled until she roared back with "I'm Still Here ... Damn It!," which marked her Broadway debut when it moved uptown in 1998. Featuring a blistering stream of cool, vindictive campy asides and muttered put-downs of everyone from Madonna to Princess Diana, it served notice that Bernhard was back, edgy as ever, ready to reveal almost everything.