Aha Moment: Sandra Bernhard

“Larger-than-life” doesn’t do justice to performer Sandra Bernhard. She can be cartoonishly tough and irreverent, but also intensely sincere. Her breakout role came in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983), in which she plays an obsessed fan who helps kidnap the talk show host played by Jerry Lewis.
Turns out Bernhard has her own (healthy) obsession with a famous performer. When she saw a touring production of Hello, Dolly!, starring Carol Channing, “right from the get-go, I assumed I should be a part of the cast. ‘Why am I not on stage here, playing at least one of the supporting roles?'” For one reason, because Bernhard was only eight at the time. But sitting there in the audience, “I felt I was home and where I belonged with these bigger-than-life characters.” Bernhard set out to have a career that would make her idol proud.
(Originally aired: October 28, 2011)
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Video: Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! (1979)