When some women decide to change hairstyles, they rip out pages from fashion magazines. Not Rosie O'Donnell. Instead, the ex-talk show queen turned to '80s rocker Boy George -- or rather, former Boy George backup singer Helen Terry -- for inspiration. "She had this exact haircut," O'Donnell says of her shorn, skater-punk look, which she chose as a way of convincing George that she was hip enough to produce his risqué London stage show Taboo on Broadway. "The first time I met him I said, 'I loved the show,' and he said, 'Really? (But) you are so suburban!' So when I went back to see him I had this new haircut, because I wanted him to see that I am not that suburban."

Maybe, as George might put it, O'Donnell is just a "Karma Chameleon." Her actions during the past six months have left many -- including business partners, colleagues and some fans -- wondering what she's up to. A lot has happened: In March she declared publicly that she is gay. Two months later she quit her six-year-old TV talk show, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family. In June, while performing stand-up at the Mohegan Sun Casino, the woman once known as the Queen of Nice proclaimed herself "a bitch who ain't so nice and just a big-mouthed fat lesbian," peppered her jokes with expletives and took shots at Michael Jackson ("he's a freak") and Bill Clinton ("he disgusts me"). On Sept. 18 she announced she was ditching her 16-month-old magazine, Rosie, after months of fighting with her publisher, Gruner + Jahr USA, and amid accusations that she had screamed abuse at her staff. "If I'm going to have my name and my brand on the corner of a magazine, it has to be my vision," says O'Donnell, 40. "They (G +J) tried to say it no longer could be."

While no one from Gruner + Jahr would comment on the record for this story, the company's marketing officer Cindy Spengler issued a stinging statement in the wake of O'Donnell's announcement. "She has walked away from her television show, her brand, her public personality, her civility -- and now her fans, the advertising community, her business partner and her contractual responsibilities," the statement declared. G + J says it stands to lose upward of $100 million and may sue the star for damages. As an example of just how bitter the dispute had become, one passage in a 40-page legal complaint drafted by G + J alleges that O'Donnell told a female manager who was a cancer survivor, "You know what happens to people who lie? They get cancer." O'Donnell, who lost her mother to breast cancer in 1973, has campaigned for a cure and written a book on the disease. And while she admits yelling at the manager, she calls the cancer allegation "absurd." Did she blow her top in the office? Sure, she says, but only with top executives. "I am never," she says, "abusive to my staff."