Chelsea Handler Biography / Pictures

Chelsea Handler (born February 25, 1975) is an American stand-up comedienne, humorist, television host, actress, and best-selling author.

Chelsea Handler currently has her own late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately, on the E! Cable Television Network. In 2009, she won a Bravo A-List Award.

Biography

Chelsea was born in the affluent, suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey, in the United States. The youngest of six children, she was raised Jewish by her Mormon mother and Jewish father. Handler's mother died from cancer. Chelsea 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.”

Chelsea has performed nationwide as a stand-up comedienne, 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 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." 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, Chelsea was on the CBS gameshow Million Dollar Password as one of the celebrity players. On April 15, 2009, Chelsea won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for "A-List Funny".

Chelsea has authored two books on the New York Times Best Seller List. Chelsea wrote My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands (ISBN 1582346186 ) as her memoir. Chelsea also wrote Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (ISBN 0061173398), a collection of humorous essays. Are You There, Vodka hit the NYTimes non-fiction best seller list on May 11, 2008; it has already had a print run of over 350,000. She is currently penning her third book.

In 2007, Chelsea 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, Chelsea began starring on her own half-hour late-night comedy series on E! titled Chelsea Lately. This series places Chelsea 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. 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 Chelsea said, "The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is.” The New York Times reported that Chelsea Lately has been renewed by E! to run until December 2009; Chelsea received another contract extension in March 2009 to keep Chelsea Lately on the air through 2012.

Since 2007, Chelsea 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. Chelsea decided to drop out of the project due to her scheduling commitments to her E! show Chelsea Lately.

Chelsea has confirmed she is dating Ted Harbert, who, as the CEO of Comcast Entertainment Group, oversees E! Entertainment Television. On the January 29, 2008, episode of Chelsea Lately, she claimed that she was asked to do season six of the hit television series Dancing with the Stars but declined.