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Rosie O’Donnell

Queen of Comedy

Patricia Harty, Editor-in-Chief
October / November 2000

October 1, 2000 by Leave a Comment

Rosie O’Donnell, the queen of daytime TV, recalls the time she and her family spent in Ireland shortly after the death of her mother.

℘℘℘

I remember eating salt and vinegar potato chips and having sweets, the candy, those Marathon bars, remember those? We used to go to the woods and my cousin would shoot cap guns and we’d hide in the bushes and watch the helicopters come because we were in Belfast for part of it. It’s all sort of a fuzzy, hazy memory, but I do remember playing soccer all the time, which we never did in the U.S., and picking up the brogue right away and speaking that way the whole time we were there and all my siblings making fun of me.

How important is being an Irish Catholic to you?

I think that my Irish heritage is ingrained in me in ways I don’t even fully comprehend yet, but I know that it comes out. As far as my Catholicism, although I’m not practicing as a Catholic at the moment, I know that when I drive past an accident, before I realize what I’m doing, I cross myself. So there are things that are ingrained in you that come up from your childhood, the foundation of how you were raised. It definitely had a profound impact on me. – September / October 1996 ♦

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