Rosie O’Donnell on the day her friendship with Ellen DeGeneres fell apart.

Between a childhood marred by tragedy and a groundbreaking career, Rosie O'Donnell has lived a life in the public eye that few could imagine — and she's never shied away from speaking about it.

Her life was irrevocably changed on St Patrick's Day when she was 10 years old. Her mother, Roseanne O'Donnell, died of breast cancer. Four days later, she turned 11.

What should have been a day of celebration was instead clouded by grief.

"Here I was grieving my mother and being given presents," O'Donnell told Mamamia's No Filter. "And it just felt so wrong."

Listen to Rosie O'Donnell's chat on Mamamia's No Filter. Post continues below.

As an adult, O'Donnell's image of her mother is frozen in those idealised childhood memories.

"I don't know her as a woman," she said. "I never got to see her age. I never got to see her go through menopause… become a grandparent."

She clings to those fragments because it's all she has.

"When she died, we never mentioned her again; her name was never spoken," O'Donnell said.

"Nobody said the word mummy in the house."

Rosie O'Donnell circa 1990. Image: Getty.

Her father fled their grief and moved the family to Ireland for the summer. When they returned, all traces of her mum had been removed from the family home.

"It was like she disappeared," she said.

"We were sort of robbed of every memory and smell and photo and instance of her… I only have about three photos of her."

Grief became a solitary battle.

"It was very difficult to grow up in a place where you suffer a loss, and then you're not allowed to discuss it with anyone," O'Donnell recalled.

"When I would get on the phone and somebody would call and say, 'Is your mother home?' I'd say, 'No, she's out.' I couldn't tell anyone until I was in college that my mother had died."

Decades later, she's still working through that loss.

Her stand-up live show Common Knowledge, heading to Australia in October, is built around her mum.

"It starts and ends with her, the whole show," O'Donnell said.

"It's sort of me coming to terms with being a motherless child and then becoming the mother."

O'Donnell at her show in New York City in 1996. Image: Getty.

From childhood, O'Donnell was determined to create the family she'd lost.

"When I figured out that I was gay, I knew that I would adopt a lot of kids," she said.

She went on to adopt five children — Parker, 30, Chelsea, 27, Blake, 25, Vivienne, 22, and Clay, 12.

But growing up motherless had warped her understanding of parenting.

O'Donnell found herself trapped by her 10-year-old self's fantasy of the perfect mum.

Desperate to shield her children from any pain, O'Donnell became their human bubble wrap.

"I smoothed the road in front of them too much, so that the tiniest bump in adulthood became a big trauma for them," she admitted.

"When my kids now maybe have a little bit of a failure to launch… I think this is all on me."

O'Donnell with her daughters Vivienne Rose and Chelsea Belle in 2015.

"My interest was always female."

Growing up in the 70s, O'Donnell knew she was different, but she had no roadmap for what that meant.

Her older brother was also gay, and she believes her mother always knew.

"A lot of things that I like to do were boy things like play sports and ride a skateboard and learn to juggle… I think it worried her," she said.

But even as a child, O'Donnell's focus was clear.

"I was never interested in any way in finding out anything about the boys in my class, but the girls — I totally wanted to know all their secrets, all their stories. I wanted to meet their parents," she said.

"My focus and my interest was always female."

O'Donnell and ex-wife Kelli Carpenter with their children. Image: Getty.

In 1973, there were no gay people on television. No role models. No representation.

"I remember being a gay kid thinking, 'Oh my god, there's no one out there. There's no one out there who's like me' and it was very lonely and isolating," she said.

At 16, when she got her driver's licence, O'Donnell found her safe space.

"I would drive in the car and say out loud, 'I am gay. I am gay' because that was the only place I could do it," she said.

Her salvation came from an unexpected source: a 27-year-old teacher who became the mother figure she'd lost.

"She's the first person to say, 'I love you' to me," O'Donnell recalled.

"She was the first person to give me a hug… She took me into her family, and she was the first person I told, and she was absolutely fine with it."

The teacher's advice was simple but revolutionary for 1975: "You can't wish that you had blue eyes if you have brown eyes, you can't wish it away. Ro, just be who you are."

Tragically, she too died of breast cancer.

O'Donnell is heading to Australia in October. Image: Getty.

When it came to relationships, O'Donnell discovered she was nothing like her tough public persona.

"The women that I've been with have all said people would be shocked to find out how you actually are versus your image," she said.

"I've always been very vulnerable and very tender."

O'Donnell has never been casual about love.

"I haven't had many lovers… And it usually is a very long commitment. It's not a casual thing. I've never had a one-night stand," she said.

O'Donnell realised she's demi-sexual, "where you have to have an emotional connection in order to be sexual."

"I always made a joke that if you want to have a relationship, a physical sexual relationship with me, you need a big sign that says 'I am flirting with you', because I won't get it. I think everyone's my friend," she said.

'With menopause comes tremendous wisdom.'

Today, at 62, O'Donnell has found something she never had as a child: peace.

"With menopause comes tremendous wisdom," she said.

"I have stopped caring about what other people think, and I've just been able to sort of do myself in a way that I never was before."

That wisdom has forced her to confront painful truths about her past relationships, including her marriage to former wife Kelli Carpenter.

"Getting a divorce the first time with Kelli was very, very painful, because I never wanted to do that to my kids," she said.

Looking back, O'Donnell recognises she made motherhood consume everything, leaving no space to be a wife.

"I had a tendency to dissociate and to focus all my energy on the kids and on my role as a mother, and that was my priority," she said.

"I wasn't good at taking care of anyone except for my children, because my desire as a child to be taken care of was so huge and overwhelming that it dominated everything."

O'Donnell and Carpenter in 2003. Image: Getty.

That same brutal honesty extends to her most painful professional betrayal — her fallout with Ellen DeGeneres.

When DeGeneres came out as gay on her sitcom in 1997, O'Donnell stood by her side. But in 2004, everything changed when DeGeneres appeared on Larry King Live and said they weren't friends.

O'Donnell was watching the interview in bed with Carpenter when her heart broke.

"That was like one of the most painful things that ever happened to me in show business in my life," O'Donnell said.

"I couldn't believe it… I have photos of her holding my newborn babies. I knew her for 30 years.

"She was, all of a sudden, in the position I was in… and instead of deciding to stand next to me and hold my hand, which is what I did to her, she did the opposite.

"I would have apologised… But I think in her mind, she thinks I keep rehashing it for pleasure. I don't rehash it for pleasure. I rehash it because our careers have taken sort of parallel, interwoven paths."

Portia de Rossi, Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell in 2006. Image: Getty.

The search for peace.

O'Donnell's search for peace eventually led her across an ocean. Moving to Ireland was "self-preservation", especially with Clay living with autism.

"I wanted to go quietly and keep my child's life calm," she said.

She was also seeking a place away from the Trump administration.

"I talked about him in 2007, and he hasn't stopped using me as a punch line ever since," she said.

"Many male comedians did what I did, and worse, but he didn't go after them in the way that he went after me, because he's misogynistic and sexist and cruel."

Ireland has given her something America never could: anonymity.

"I don't worry about violence, I don't worry about confrontation, I don't worry about my child walking to get an ice cream with her friends," she said.

"There is no celebrity worship in Ireland, and I think that's beautiful. Everyone treats you as a person."

After decades in the spotlight, O'Donnell knows exactly how she wants to be remembered.

"She cared too much… children and women, and those are the people that I always wanted to protect," she said.

"I have a lot of Emmy Awards, and people are like, 'Where are they?' And they're in storage somewhere, because I never wanted to have this house that was full of my accolades. I wanted it to be a house for children…

"So I think if my legacy could be that she was all about family and women and kids, that that would be fine with me."

Feature image: Getty.