Who

The foul-mouthed Bernhard is a standup comic, occasional TV actress, author, and lesbian icon. She also happens to be patient zero for Kabbalah, having hooked Madonna on all the silliness.

Backstory

The daughter of a proctologist father and artist mother, Bernhard was raised in Scottsdale and moved to LA at age 19, working as a manicurist to pay the bills while she pursued a standup career. Her first major movie role arrived in 1983 when she appeared in The King of Comedy with Robert De Niro, but she continued to work the stand-up circuit for most of the next decade, only becoming household name in the early '90s when she played one of the first openly gay characters on TV, Nancy Bartlett on Roseanne. Since then Bernhard has popped up on the small screen fairly regularly: She's had cameos on shows like The Sopranos, Ally McBeal, Crossing Jordan, and, perhaps inevitably given her rep as TV's most famous lesbian, Showtime's The L Word. But she's also continued to pump out her bawdy one-woman shows, including I'm Still Here…Damn It! in the late '90s and, more recently, Everything Bad and Beautiful.

Of note

Her comedic mainstay may be the acerbic take-down of our shallow celebrity and fashion driven culture, but Sandra has always moved in pretty glamorous circles herself: She calls Isaac Mizrahi one of her closest friends, was once BFFs with Madonna, and spent much of the 1990s cavorting with supermodels. (She dated Venezuelan model Patricia Velazquez for five years in the '90s.) And although she's a self-proclaimed feminist and has long been preoccupied with the objectification of women, Bernard—who posed for Playboy in 1992—has been more than happy to draw attention to her own unconventional beauty, dying her hair bright red, dressing in skin-tight outfits, wearing a see through dress (while pregnant) to perform I'm Still Here…Dammit, and changing outfits right on stage in Everything Bad and Beautiful. Still, it's hard to dispute the cultural impact of her snarky brand of comedy, which has heavily influenced more than few writers and comedians. As a reporter once put it, "Kathy Griffin should probably pay Ms. Bernhard royalties for the rest of her career."

For the record

Feel free to blame Bernhard for turning half of Hollywood into Kabbalah cult members. It was Sandra who introduced Kabbalah to Roseanne Barr and Madonna in the mid-1990s. And it was Madonna, of course, who was later responsible for signing up a bunch of celebs like Britney Spears and Demi Moore.

Drama

Bernhard is in the business of offending people, so it's no surprise that she's gotten into her share of tussles over the course of her career. In recent years, she offended the ladies on The View after she made hostile comments about Mariah Carey and Laura Bush. She also freaked out MAC cosmetics, who hired her as a spokesperson in 2004, after proclaiming she wasn't an "intimidated, frightened, right-wing Republican thin-lipped bitch."

Personal

Bernhard has alternately described herself as gay and bisexual over the years, and her extremely close friendship with Madonna in the 1990s raised eyebrows. The two had a falling out for reasons neither has ever explained, although it seems they've since reconciled. Bernhard currently lives on West 22nd Street with long-time partner, Vanity Fair PR chief Sara Switzer. ("She's cold and WASP-y, and I love it!") Bernhard has a daughter named Cicely Yasin, who was born in 1998. Bernhard has never identified the father.