Sara Gilbert

SARA GILBERT

Date of Birth: January 29, 1975

Like her adopted sister Melissa (Little House on the Prairie), Sara Gilbert also grew up on a television series, the long-running ABC sitcom Roseanne (1988-1997). Third generation of a showbiz family, her grandfather was a writer for The Honeymooners, her grandmother a former Miss Brooklyn and a dancer and her mother a producer and talent manager. Gilbert made her professional debut in a television commercial at age six, and from there appeared in the television series Tales of the Apple Dumpling Gang (1982). She then played a small role in the made-for-TV movie Calamity Jane. In 1988, she appeared in Runaway Ralph as part of the ABC Weekend Special and then landed the role on Roseanne.

As Darlene Connor in Roseanne, Gilbert played a cynical, smart-mouthed but sensitive foil for her TV family. Gilbert also showed versatility as a confused Daddy's girl who is victimized by a calculating Drew Barrymore in Poison Ivy (1989) and as a southern child with a dark secret who is befriended by a gentle black man in the well-wrought Sudie and Simpson (1990). Gilbert has been twice nominated for an Emmy and has won three Youth in Film Awards. During the last couple seasons of Roseanne, Gilbert began attending Yale University where she graduated from as an art major.

Following the end of Roseanne, Gilbert continued acting, appearing in Desert Blue (1998), Light It Up, The Big Tease (both 1999) and High Fidelity (2000). Sara and her partner, Allison Adler, have a son that Adler gave birth to via a sperm donor.

Filmography:

Laws of Attraction (2004)
Riding in Cars with Boys (2001)
High Fidelity (2000)
$30 (1999)
The Big Tease (1999)
Light It Up (1999)
Desert Blue (1998)
Dead Beat (1994)
The Phony Perfector (1994)
Poison Ivy (1992)