| Chelsea Handler | |
|---|---|
![]() Handler at LA Direct Magazine's "Remember to Give" Holiday Party 2008 |
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| Born | Chelsea Joy Handler February 25, 1975 Livingston, New Jersey, US |
| Occupation | Actress, author, comedian |
| Years active | 1996 - present |
| Official website | |
Chelsea Joy Handler[1] (born February 25,[2] 1975)[3] is an American stand-up comedian, humorist, television host, actress, and best-selling author. She has her own late night talk show Chelsea Lately on the E! Cable Television Network. In 2009 she won a Bravo A-List Award. She also has her own column in Cosmopolitan and the UK celebrity magazine Now Magazine.
Handler has acknowledged her technique, saying, "It's not so much humor as it is comments that aren't actually funny".[4]
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Handler was born in the suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey.[5] The youngest of six children, she was raised in Reform Judaism by her Mormon mother and Jewish father.[5][6] Handler has said that while growing up, she felt like an outsider, telling a reporter, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood...Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto."[7]
Handler has performed nationwide as a stand-up comedian, appeared as a regular on the Oxygen Network series Girls Behaving Badly and on other shows, including Weekends at the D.L., The Bernie Mac Show, My Wife and Kids, and The Practice. She is a regular commentator on E! and Scarborough Country as well as a correspondent on The Tonight Show. She hosted the first episode of the reality TV show On the Lot, but quit before the second one was aired, as she later said, "because I smelled the disaster happening before it did."[8] Chelsea Handler hosted "The Chelsea Handler Show" in April 2006, which lasted two seasons. She was a guest on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld and The View; she co-hosted The View on August 2, 2007, and again on September 5, 2008 — and hosts her own late night talk show on E! titled Chelsea Lately. On January 25, 2009, Handler was on the CBS gameshow Million Dollar Password as one of the celebrity players. On April 15, 2009, Handler won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for "A-List Funny".[9]
Handler has authored two books on the New York Times Best Seller List. Handler wrote My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands (ISBN 1-58234-618-6 ) as her memoir. Handler also wrote Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (ISBN 0-06-117339-8), a collection of humorous essays. Are You There, Vodka hit the NYTimes non-fiction best seller list on May 11, 2008;[10] it has already had a print run of over 350,000.[11]Her third book titled Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, was released on March 9, 2010.[12]
In 2007, Handler performed with the Hour Stand-Up Comedy Tour across the U.S.. Her stand-up has been televised on Vh1's Love Lounge, Comedy Central's Premium Blend, and HBO's broadcast of the Aspen Comedy Festival. Chelsea Handler was the host of the Fox show "On The Lot." The show, produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, is a competition for aspiring filmmakers who are vying for a chance at stardom. She was replaced after one episode by former Robin & Company entertainment anchor, Adrianna Costa.
In July 2007, Handler began starring on her own half-hour late-night comedy series on E! titled Chelsea Lately. This series places Handler against a slew of male-dominated talk shows, and adding a considerable amount of sarcasm and ridicule to the format. On the show's 100th episode, Chelsea revealed to viewers that E! had picked up Chelsea Lately for another 150 episodes.[13] The show has proved a hit and averaged more than a half-million viewers since its premiere (much more than the average for a late night cable program) and has clips on Youtube with more than a million views. All this success is despite the fact that Handler's guests often are not A-list celebrities. In a 2008 interview Handler said, "The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is."[14] The New York Times reported that Chelsea Lately has been renewed by E! to run until December 2009;[15] Handler received another contract extension in March 2009 to keep Chelsea Lately on the air through 2012.[16]
Since 2007, Handler has appeared in the Internet based program In the Motherhood with Leah Remini and (since January 2008) Jenny McCarthy. The comedic series is "about moms, by moms and for moms". On September 8, 2008, it was announced ABC would be turning In The Motherhood into a series starring Jessica St. Clair, Megan Mullaly, and Cheryl Hines.[17][18] Handler decided to drop out of the project due to her scheduling commitments to her show Chelsea Lately.
On Monday January 25, 2010 Handler confirmed via her late night talk-show that she had broken up with long time boyfriend Ted Harbert who, as the CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group, oversees E! Entertainment Television.[19] Handler reportedly broke up with Harbert recently after living together for three years but has since cleared up rumors on Chelsea Lately, poking fun at tabloids while insisting to still be with her 'live-in lover'. Chelsea stated that she is "newly single."[20]On another note, Handler has stated in many interviews, her books, and episodes of 'Chelsea Lately' that she has no interest in having children. On the January 29, 2008 episode of Chelsea Lately she claimed she was asked to do season six of the hit television series Dancing with the Stars but declined. Handler was ranked #91 on the 2009 Maxim Hot 100. She is close friends with Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy.
Handler appeared on one of two covers of December 2009 edition of Playboy Magazine, the alternate cover featuring Dancing with the Stars semifinalist and model Joanna Krupa. Inside the magazine Handler posed for a non-nude pictorial.
Chelsea Jane Handler (born 1975-02-25) is an American standup comedian, humorist, television host, actress and author. She has her own late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately, on the E! Cable Television Network.
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