Brett Butler Looks to Return to the Spotlight

Remember Brett Butler?

She starred in Grace Under Fire in the mid-1990's. It was a gigantic hit and she became one of the most famous women in America.

"For one little year in '93 it was me, and Oprah, and Hillary Clinton," she said.

The show made it's star rich and famous beyond her dreams, making $250,000 per episode.

But the actress' troubles with drugs, painkillers and cocaine were taking a major toll. It was so serious, the few friends she had left assumed she'd come to a tragic end.

"They said everytime the phone would ring they thought it would be that I would died," Butler said.

Her behavior on the set of her show has been described as "un-hinged," and just five weeks into the fifth season, ABC abruptly cancelled the show.  

"So the day I did come to work and a security guard walked me off the lot, I was surprised," she said.

In the blink of an eye, her Hollywood career was over. She retreated to a farm in Georgia for years and then was homeless for a short period when the farm was foreclosed on.

But Brett Butler is making a comeback, and it's another star with a troubled history who's coming to her rescue.

"My manager called and said Charlie wants you on his show. Charlie likes me and I don't know, you all know how crazy he is. I'm grateful for that," she said.

If anyone could relate, it's Charlie Sheen. He, too, was famously fired from his number one-rated sitcom, Two and a Half Men, in 2011.

Sheen has given Butler a recurring role on his FX show Anger Management. She plays the wise-cracking bartender.

Butler is also returning to her stand-up roots. Garrett Morris, from Saturday Night Live fame, invited Brett to do a set at his LA comedy club over the weekend.

Brett said she only knows how to make people laugh, and she wants to keep on working.

"I do not want to keep being the cautionary tale," she said.