Roseanne Barr - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1970, when she was 17, Barr had a child that she placed for adoption; they were later reunited. On February 4, 1974 Barr married Bill Pentland, a motel clerk she met while in Colorado. They had three children: Jessica, Jennifer, and Jake. Pentland and Barr divorced on January 16, 1990. Four days later on January 20, 1990, Barr married fellow comedian Tom Arnold, and became known as Roseanne Arnold during the marriage. Barr had met Arnold in 1983 in Minneapolis where he opened for her stand-up comedy act. In 1988, Barr brought Arnold onto her sitcom, Roseanne, as a writer.

Barr has a lesbian sister, Geraldine Barr, and a gay brother, Ben Barr, both of whom inspired her to introduce gay characters into her sitcom. Barr has stated that she supports gay marriage. Geraldine was also Barr's manager while performing in comedy clubs and at the start of her sitcom. Geraldine claimed that Arnold tried to dominate Barr "for his own reasons". After being fired by Roseanne, Geraldine filed a $70.3 million breach of contract lawsuit in Superior Court of Los Angeles County on December 18, 1991. She said Barr promised her half the earnings from the Roseanne show for helping invent the "domestic goddess" character in 1981, serving as "writer, organizer, accountant, bookkeeper and confidante". Since it was six months past the statute of limitations, the suit was thrown out.

In a 1991 interview with People, Roseanne revealed herself to be an "incest survivor", accusing both of her parents of physical and sexual abuse, claims which they and Geraldine publicly denied. Melvin Belli, her parents' lawyer, said that they had passed a lie detector test "with flying colors". Barr was even part of an incest recovery group, something she said her parents knew about but for which they were "in denial". On February 14, 2011, Barr and Geraldine appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show where Barr admitted that the word "incest" could have been the wrong word to use and should have waited until her therapy was over before revealing the "darkest time" in her life. She told Oprah, "I was in a very unhappy relationship and I was prescribed numerous psychiatric drugs... to deal with the fact that I had some mental illness... I totally lost touch with reality... (and) I didn’t know what the truth was... I just wanted to drop a bomb on my family". She added that not everything was "made up", saying, "Nobody accuses their parents of abusing them without justification". Geraldine said they did not speak for 12 years, but had recently reconciled.

Barr filed for divorce from Tom Arnold on April 18, 1994 in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, citing irreconcilable differences. Their efforts to have children were unsuccessful. On February 14, 1995, Barr married Ben Thomas, her one-time personal security guard, at Caesars Tahoe with a reception at Planet Hollywood. In November 1994, she become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization and they have a son named Buck. The couple stayed together until 2002.

In the mid-1990s Barr had multiple cosmetic surgeries performed, such as a breast reduction, tummy tuck, and a nose job. During the late 1990s she had gastric bypass surgery.

In 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.