Rosie O’Donnell on heart attack & return to stand-up

Rosie O’Donnell made her name as a stand-up comic in the 1980s but since then has had greater fame as an actress, talk show host and LGBT activist.

Now Rosie is returning to her comedy roots. She began writing stand-up routines again last year as she recovered from a massive heart attack she suffered in August 2012.

She will have dates early next year in Australia and tells the Sydney Morning Herald her material will be far different now that she is a 51-year-old mother of five adopted children including a baby wife Michelle Rounds had earlier this year. She has four older children with former spouse Kelli Carpenter.

‘Stuff about what it feels like to be the mother of teenagers and then having a baby, talking about getting divorced and being a public figure and having your fame or notoriety kind of fade and change … a lot of topics that I have never discussed before.”

”I’ll still say things that’ll piss people off, don’t you worry about that! I think any comedian goes towards the things that anger them and they’re able to twist into a way that gives you the comedy but the point still hits home. I’m not afraid to speak up about what I believe in. It’s just my nature and has been since I was a little kid. Whenever my handlers tell me not to talk about something, it sticks in my head and it’s the first thing that comes out when I reach for something.”

Rosie is well aware that she is routinely described as an overbearing loudmouth.

”It’s mostly right-wing Republican traditionalists who think that,” she says. ”To some people, I’m a scary monster and to other people I’m, you know, I speak truth to power.”

As for her heart attack, she waited 48 hours before seeing a doctor not realizing what was happening.

‘I was in the critical unit and a friend of mine came to visit. I was half awake and she asked the nurse ‘how is she doing compared to everyone else?’ and the nurse said ‘excellent. ‘My friend said ‘how do you know?’ and the nurse said ‘because everyone else is dead!’ She never had a patient survive what I had. That really gave me pause and I started to think about how close I was to not surviving and you know, my kids.”

Rosie adds: ”It made me change a lot of the ways I was living and the stuff I was eating. It feels like I was rebooted and started again at 51 years old.”