A Rosie Outlook

On these shores at least, we've only had a few roads into the world of Rosie O'Donnell. As Meg Ryan's loveable bestie in Sleepless In Seattle, next to Tom Hanks and Madonna in A League Of Their Own, or for her controversial stint on daytime talk show The View. She's been a brash and hilarious web presence and public figure with an enormous heart, often taking a stand for progressive social issues around gay rights and America's presence in the Middle East.

But the 51-year-old Long Island native has many more strings to her bow. She is a passionate foster mother, gives big to charity through her For All Kids Foundation, she's run a magazine, written books, runs a LGBT vacation company, has had her own Oprah Winfrey-style TV talk show, a show on Broadway, and has appeared in a plethora of TV shows and films.

Stand-up comedy is where it all started for O'Donnell, though, back in 1984 on TV talent show Star Search, and a recent brush with death has made her reconnect with those roots and decide to bring a stand-up show to Australia.

"It happened on a Sunday morning," O'Donnell starts, launching into her breathless storytelling style, “and I was helping a woman out of a car. She was a large woman and I remember thinking, 'God, I gotta get my weight under control, this could be me in 20 years'. About two hours later my arms hurt but I thought it was from helping the woman and I didn't go to the doctor for more than 48 hours. When I did go, he said, 'Do you know why you're here?' and I said, 'Well, I kind of had some weird arm pain on Monday and I got really tired and I threw up and I was very sweaty', and he was kind of looking at me and was like, 'Uh… huh'. He gave me an EKG and he said, 'We're gonna put you in an ambulance. You've had a major heart attack, you're going to go right to the cath' lab. If they can steth' you, they will; if not you're going to have open heart surgery', and I was, like, 'Wait, wait, wait, what?'

Before I knew it I was being prepped for surgery and there were all of these interns that looked like they were on Grey's Anatomy shaving my pubic hair and telling me they were big fans, and I was, like, 'You gotta be kidding me'… Before they put me fully out they said, 'Do you want to be shocked back to life?' and I said, 'Yes, I am, for the moment, very pro-life – I do not want to die – so anything you can do to prolong my life I would like for you to do', and then I woke up and I was in ICU, and they were saying it's a miracle I survived.”

O'Donnell was the only person the hospital had ever seen survive a 100%, 48-hour blockage of their LAD. She became a test case for medical schools. The question of why she lived was also a pressing one for O'Donnell. “That really played havoc on my mind … I just think, 'Well, I would've missed that, and I would've missed the finale of Breaking Bad, my child slamming a home run in his baseball game, the leaves falling in the backyard when the sun – you know, things that you just never imagined taking notice of.”

As a result, O'Donnell started compiling a bucket list. Right at the top: more travelling, especially to the land of “beaches, kangaroos, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, koala bears … and smart, fun-loving party people”, where she's never been before.

“As I was writing about all my new experiences as someone who was living in the world having almost died,” O'Donnell says, “I started going to stand-up clubs and realised that, 'Wow, I have a whole new act', and my agent said, 'Well, do you want to tour?' and I said, 'Yeah', and she said, 'Well, where do you want to start?' and, kind of kidding, I said, 'Well, how about Australia and New Zealand', and she said, 'Okay', and I said, 'Okay?!'” She laughs.

Her goal with this show is to put the argy-bargy of life into perspective. American women have a great deal of complacency when it comes to heart health, O'Donnell says. “People are not really well versed in the signs, and I was one of those people. [After] I just thought, 'Gosh, if I could do a stand-up show and incorporate some of the information with comedy, what a tremendous service that would be'. I could say, 'I too was willfully blind and I very nearly paid for it with my life'.”

O'Donnell developed the skill of dealing with serious things through laughter in childhood. Raised by her father after the death of her mother when she was ten, humour and feelings always went hand-in-hand in the O'Donnell house. “You were only really allowed to talk about things that were emotional if you could make them funny,” she says. “You couldn't really talk about what it felt like to have your mother die, but you could make a joke about what it was like to have mismatched shoes, or to have your father trying to mash potatoes with the water still in the pot,” she laughs. “If you made a joke about it, you were allowed to have the subtext be something poignant and painful.”

Over an impressive 30-year career not without its run-ins (perhaps most notably with Donald Trump), O'Donnell has managed to use this humour-heart combo to generate a public persona and do some bloody good things. “Fame, for me, was a way to live forever, and it was a way to access power,” she says. “I did want to be famous and I wanted to try and harness that for social good.”

Rosie O'Donnell has cancelled her Australian tour.