Television Career
Gilbert decided at age six that she wanted to be an actress after her older sister, Melissa Gilbert, got a plaque on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Following appearances in television movies and a commercial for Kool Aid, at the age of thirteen she landed the role of Darlene Conner, the sarcastic middle child, in Roseanne. Sara was a cast member during the show's nine-year run from 1988 to 1997, for which she also 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 part of the cast, shooting remote segments of Darlene at a soundstage in New York. At Yale, she majored in art with an emphasis on photography; she graduated with honors in 1997.
Gilbert has made guest appearances on shows such as The Simpsons, 24, Will & Grace, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Private Practice. Starting in 2004, she had a recurring role as medical student Jane Figler on the long-running hospital drama ER.
She returned to prime time television in the fall of 2005 in the sitcom Twins on The WB network. The sitcom was canceled after one season, when the WB and UPN networks merged to become The CW and had to drop a number of shows. She also had a recurring role on the short-lived CBS sitcom The Class as Fern Velch.
Since 2007 she has appeared in a number of episodes of the CBS TV series The Big Bang Theory as Leslie Winkle, a scientist friend of Leonard Hofstadter, who is played by Johnny Galecki, who had previously played Gilbert's love interest David Healy on Roseanne. Starting with the second episode of the second season of The Big Bang Theory, Gilbert was elevated to the show's main cast, portraying once again a potential love interest of Galecki's character, and at one point a love interest to Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg). By January 2009, it was announced that the writers did not know how to write for her character full-time and her status was then reduced from regular to recurring.
Gilbert is a co-host and executive producer of The Talk, a talk show that premiered October 18, 2010. Gilbert appears alongside Julie Chen, Sharon Osbourne, Sheryl Underwood and Aisha Tyler.
Read more about this topic: Sara Gilbert
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