How Rosie O'Donnell Is Adding To Her $120 Million Net Worth
While you may not hear much about Rosie O’Donnell these days, trust and believe that she still has an enormous fortune worth $120 million, so even if she was to retire today, the former talk show host has made more than enough money to retire.
The 59-year-old, who's been feuding with Howard Stern for years, began her career in comedy as a teenager before landing her breakthrough when she was discovered on the TV series Star Search back in 1984. It wasn’t long after before O’Donnell would find herself cast in a number of television and film roles, which introduced her to an even bigger audience than what she was used to on Star Search.
What really started making the self-proclaimed “Queen of Nice” a lot of money in the ‘90s was her syndicated daytime talk show, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, which ran from 1996 to 2002, spanning six seasons and a whopping 1,193 episodes, and, of course, multiple Daytime Emmy Awards.
From there, as we all know, O’Donnell went on to join the panelists of The View in 2005, where her reputation had taken quite a hit thanks to her public feud with Donald Trump and disputes regarding the Bush administration’s policies concerning the Iraq War.
But how exactly has this New Yorker managed to accumulate such a hefty fortune and where is she making her money from these days? Here’s the lowdown…
Rosie O’Donnell’s Net Worth
O’Donnell had a lengthy on-again, off-again run on the talk show The View, where reports claim she was making a whopping $5 million a year just to share her views on politics and celebrity gossip (no pun intended).
In February 2015, just five months after returning, a source close to production told The Wrap that O’Donnell was stepping away from the talk show in order to focus on her personal life following her split with wife Michelle Rounds, whom she was married to for three years.
“I can confirm that Rosie and her wife Michelle split in November,” a rep for O’Donnell shared. “Rosie has teens and an infant at home that need her attention. This has been a very stressful situation. She is putting her personal health and family first. ABC has been wonderfully understanding and supportive of her personal decision to leave ‘The View.’ Next week will be her last.”
A follow-up statement from ABC read, “Rosie is an immensely talented star who comes in each and every morning brimming with ideas, excitement and passion for the show.
When she told us that she wanted to exit ‘The View,’ we respected and understood her desire to put her well-being and her family first. We’re delighted she’s still part of the ABC family with upcoming guest appearances on ‘The Fosters.’ And we know she’ll return to ‘The View’ often with her unique point of view and updates on her work and her family.”
As mentioned by ABC, O’Donnell continued working on the TV series The Fosters, which she joined in 2014, playing Rita Hendricks. She departed the show in 2016.
O’Donnell also appeared on the TV show Mom for two episodes that year before signing on for the TV musical, Hairspray Live!.
A year later, the mother of five made a triumphant return with a recurring role on the hit series SMILF where she played Tutu between 2017 to 2019, and in 2020, she joined the cast of HBO’s I Know This Much Is True.
While the coronavirus pandemic has been rough for all of us, 2020 proved to be another great year for O’Donnell, who was announced to join Showtime’s American Gigolo, which is currently filming and expected to air by the year’s end.
Clearly, acting is at the forefront of O’Donnell’s career, despite the fact that she made a fortune from her stint on daytime television.
There’s no word on how much she made while fronting her own talk show, but considering that the lasted for six seasons, it’s fair to assume, she made at least $3-5 million a year — particularly since The Rosie O’Donnell Show was syndicated.
As for a potential return to The View, O'Donnell says she absolutely has no interest because she believes that her former co-host Whoopi Goldberg has never really liked her.
"Whoopi Goldberg was as mean as anyone has ever been on television to me, personally," she previously shared in the 2019 book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of The View.
"When people say, 'Well, what happened?' I say, 'Go back and watch them.' It's not like a mystery. Watch the way it went down, and I don't need to say anything."
The View remains one of the highest-rated daytime talk shows, so making a return and earning up to $5 million a year wouldn't be so bad, but it seems O'Donnell is perfectly happy focusing on her acting career over arguing with a panel of women from day-to-day.
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