Sara Gilbert

  Sara Gilbert (born Sara Rebecca Abeles; January 29, 1975) is an American actress, director, and producer known for her role as Darlene Conner on the ABC sitcom Roseanne (1988-1997; 2018), for which she received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and its spin-off, The Conners (2018-present). She is also creator and former co-host of the CBS daytime talk show The Talk and had a recurring role as Leslie Winkle on CBS's The Big Bang Theory. Gilbert was born Sara Rebecca Abeles in Santa Monica, California,the daughter of Barbara Cowan (nee Crane) and Harold Abeles. Both her parents are Jewish. Her maternal grandfather was The Honeymooners creator Harry Crane. Gilbert has four older half-siblings. Her two siblings on her mother's side, Melissa Gilbert and Jonathan Gilbert, were stars of Little House on the Prairie. In 1984, Sara took the last name Gilbert from Paul Gilbert, her mother's first husband. Gilbert also has two siblings on her father's side, sister Patrice and brother Joseph.Gilbert graduated from Yale University in 1997, with honors, majoring in art with an emphasis on photography.Following appearances in television movies and a commercial for Kool-Aid, at 13 she landed the role of Darlene Conner, the sarcastic middle child, in Roseanne. Gilbert was a cast member in the show's nine-year run (1988-97), for which she wrote a fourth-season episode story (the teleplay was written by the Guild Writers for the show) called "Don't Make Me Over." Her contribution was considered so important to Roseanne that the show's producers juggled storylines and taping schedules to allow her to study at Yale University while remaining in the cast, shooting remote segments of Darlene at a soundstage in New York.