Tom Arnold

Tom Arnold Born and raised in the small, midwestern town of Ottumwa, Iowa, Tom Arnold is one of those larger-than-life personalities who, if he weren't already real, would have been created by a Hollywood movie. One of the most well-known actors in the industry today, Tom's story begins at the University of Iowa in 1982, when he made his stage debut, a young man with a dream. It wasn't just any dream, however. It was a rather modest, even common dream, if the truth be known: to appear on TV at least… Show more once (in order, Arnold recalls, to make the folks back home like him). Following that dream, he moved to the unlikely city of Minneapolis.After a few years on the stand-up comedy circuit (the toughest training there is), Tom saw the realization of his little dream with his televised appearance on a 1987 Showtime Special. Fortunately for audiences around the world, once was not enough (either for Arnold or the hometown critics), and he next won the Twin Cities Comedy Competition, earning an invitation to appear on Roseanne Barr?s Live on HBO special in 1988. His writing and performing talents quickly brought him to Los Angeles and secured him a writer's job on ABC's top-rated sitcom, Roseanne. During the next six years, Tom worked on Roseanne as a writer, an actor (playing Arnie, Dan's friend), and as an Executive Producer. In short order he was the proud recipient of a Peabody, a Golden Globe and a Humanitas award for his many contributions to the show. Capping the sensational success of those early years, Tom and Roseanne Barr (who he married in 1990) received GLAAD's "Coolest Straight People" award for producing a particularly controversial episode involving a lesbian kiss. To this day, however, Tom's favorite memory from his days on TV's #1 show was an episode about the death of Roseanne's father. Tom wrote the speech Roseanne read at the funeral, which was the same one he delivered at his own mother's memorial. That performance earned Roseanne her first and only Emmy.

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