Desperately Seeking Susan is a 1985 American comedy-drama film directed by Susan Seidelman and starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna. Plot Roberta ( Rosanna Arquette ) is an unfulfilled suburban housewife living in Fort Lee, New Jersey who is fascinated with a woman she only knows about by reading messages to and from her in the personals section of a New York City tabloid . This fascination reaches a peak when one such ad with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan" proposes a rendezvous in Battery Park with the man who regularly seeks her. Roberta goes to Battery Park too, gets a glimpse of the woman ( Madonna ), and in a series of events involving mistaken identity , amnesia , and other farcical elements, Roberta goes from voyeur to participant in an Alice in Wonderland -style plot, ostensibly motivated by the search for a pair of stolen Egyptian earrings. Cast Rosanna Arquette as Roberta Glass Madonna as Susan Thomas Aidan Quinn as Dez Mark...