She played assistant district attorney, Gina Garrett, in John Badham’s Another Stakeout alongside Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez, and made a cameo in Carl Reiner’s Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct spoof, Fatal Instinct. She also appeared as a wise-cracking hairdresser in Beautiful Girls. O’Donnell began a trend of making praiseworthy performances in less than extraordinary films. In 1994, O’Donnell’s dream of performing live on stage materialized when she was cast as Rizzo in Tommy Tune’s Broadway revival of Grease!. However, both the production and O’Donnell’s performance met lukewarm reviews. O’Donnell also expressed concern about the message of the play, with its sexist premise about a girl who must transform herself into a tightly-clad tramp to gain acceptance by her boyfriend and his friends. Following her Broadway debut, O’Donnell appeared in Lesli Linka Glatter’s coming of age film, Now and Then alongside Demi Moore and Melanie Griffith and made a cameo on the TV sitcom Bless This House. In February 1995, after a two-year hiatus, O’Donnell returned briefly to stand-up in order to prepare for an HBO comedy special. In 1995, O’Donnell accepted a post as host of a variety talk show for NBC, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, featuring such attractions as celebrity guests and Broadway performances. Inspired by The Merv Griffin Show, O’Donnell pitted her nice and cozy attitude against the swarm of sensationalist talk shows commanding the airwaves. Her move to television also allowed her to continue in show-business while raising her two adopted children, Parker and Chelsea Belle in New York (producers built a deluxe nursery for her children right in the Rockefeller Center studio). The show quickly became one of the most popular in daytime television, and O’Donnell was hailed as the “Queen of Nice” due to her down-to-earth frankness and eye-to-eye sense of humor. O’Donnell continued to make occasional appearances in films; playing a nanny in the children’s film Harriett the Spy and a schoolteacher-nun in 1998’s Wide Awake. She blossomed in the children’s movie arena, playing the voice of Terk, Tarzan’s gorilla-companion in Disney’s animated production of Tarzan in 1999. Although O’Donnell’s repertoire is broad rather than deep, her appeal crosses the boundaries of many different media, attesting to her status as a thoroughly versatile and talented performer. Her continual support of Broadway shows, and theatre in general, brought renewed attention to the stage, and the Tony’s award show enjoyed its highest ratings in years when she hosted. In 1999, she hosted the Grammy awards.