Sandra Bernhard

Sandra Bernhard was born on June 6, 1955, in Flint, Michigan, to Jeanette (née LaZebnik) and proctologist Jerome Bernhard. She was raised Conservative Jewish and has three older brothers: Dan, David, and Mark. Her family relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona when she was ten years old, and she graduated from Saguaro High School in 1973. That same year she traveled to Israel, spending seven months at Kibbutz Kfar Menahem with her friend Daniel Chick, and later returned to the country during the Yom Kippur War.

Bernhard built her early career as a stand-up comedian, becoming a regular presence at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. Her television work began in 1977 when she was cast as a supporting player on The Richard Pryor Show, and she subsequently made frequent appearances on evening talk programs. Her film breakthrough came in 1981 when Martin Scorsese cast her as Masha, a stalker and kidnapper, in The King of Comedy. The performance earned her the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. Beginning in 1983, she made 28 appearances on Late Night with David Letterman. Comedy Central later ranked her 96th on its list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time.

Her first one-woman show, I'm Your Woman, launched in 1985 and was released as an album. In 1988, she mounted the off-Broadway production Without You, I'm Nothing, With You, I'm Not Much Better at the Orpheum Theatre, which was adapted into both a film and a double album by 1990. That year she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Comedy Album for the project. During the show's run, Bernhard and Madonna appeared together on a 1988 episode of Late Night with David Letterman, generating significant publicity through allusions to a romantic relationship between them. Bernhard later appeared in Madonna's documentary film Truth or Dare before the friendship ended in 1992.

In 1991, Bernhard began portraying Nancy Bartlett on the ABC sitcom Roseanne, appearing in 33 episodes through 1997 and becoming one of the first actresses to play an openly bisexual recurring character on American television. That same year she released her first studio album, Excuses for Bad Behavior (Part One). She hosted Reel Wild Cinema on the USA Network for two seasons beginning in 1995, and her film work during this period included Hudson Hawk and Dallas Doll, alongside roles in independent productions.

Bernhard's Broadway career spans 1998 to 2005. She starred in I'm Still Here...Damn It!, which returned her to Broadway in 1998 and was recorded as a live comedy album. She was pregnant during the production and gave birth to a daughter, Cicely, on July 4, 1998. She also appeared on Broadway in Escape: 6 Ways to Get Away (2), and holds a credit as a book writer in addition to her performing work.

Following her Broadway run, Bernhard continued developing one-woman shows and expanding her television presence. She hosted the first season of The Search for the Funniest Mother in America on Nick at Nite in 2006 and debuted her show Plan B from Outer Space in 2007, touring it through 2008. She co-wrote the Hanukkah-themed song "Miracle of Lights" with Mitchell Kaplan, which appeared on the Breaking Records compilation album Breaking For the Holidays. In 2015, she began hosting the radio program Sandyland on Sirius XM's Radio Andy and joined the cast of 2 Broke Girls as the recurring character Joedth in season four.

From 2018 to 2021, Bernhard played Nurse Judy Kubrak on the FX drama series Pose, a show centered on queer and trans ball culture in Manhattan. In 2025, she appeared as Nurse Cecily on the Apple TV+ series Severance. In October 2024, she joined the cast of the A24 film Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timothée Chalamet, playing a character named Judy. In February 2026, she was cast in the fourth season of HBO's The White Lotus, created by Mike White. At a March 2026 red-carpet appearance, Bernhard stated that she had urged White for 25 years to write her a starring role and that he had done so for that season.