This voluptuous blonde became a media phenomenon based on her co-hosting duties of “Singled Out”, the MTV Generation-X version of “The Dating Game”. Jenny McCarthy was able to parlay her success on that show into a sitcom career, beginning with the sketch series “The Jenny McCarthy Show” (MTV, 1996) and her own NBC series “Jenny” (1997-98).
The second of four daughters, McCarthy was raised in Chicago and had always harbored dreams of a showbiz career. When she ran out of tuition money for nursing school, she attempted to find work as a model but was rejected by the local agencies. According to McCarthy, she approached Playboy magazine in 1993 as a last ditch effort to earn some much needed cash. Within a few months she was Miss October and went on to earn the title of Playmate of the Year. Taking her earnings (about $100,000), she decamped to L.A. to pursue an acting career. On the West Coast, she eventually hooked up with manager Ray Manzella who had guided the early careers of Vanna White and Pamela Anderson Lee. He sent her to an audition at MTV where she was quickly hired. During her two-year stint (1995-97) as co-host of “Singled Out”, she quickly established her onscreen comic persona; rowdy and obnoxious and willing to make a fool of herself, particularly by making odd faces. McCarthy became an almost overnight sensation and MTV put her to work on other shows (i.e., “Beach House”).
In 1997, the network offered her a limited episode sketch comedy series, “The Jenny McCarthy Show”, in which she was given carte blanche. While McCarthy has cited Lucille Ball and Goldie Hawn as two of her influences, it would be hard to imagine either comedienne utilizing the low-brow, bathroom humor that McCarthy employed. Many were not impressed by sketches that had her eating her own vomit or wearing extra long armpit hair. Despite questions of her ability, McCarthy landed a sitcom deal with Paramount. Based on a guest appearance as a date from hell on the NBC sitcom “Wings”, that network agreed to shape a series around her talents. “Jenny,” with the blonde comic as a small-town girl who moves to Hollywood, debut to a mixed critical and audience reception.
Despite her small screen popularity, especially with young males, McCarthy has not yet been able to translate her popularity to the big screen. She made her acting debut as the private nurse of Christopher Walken in the little-seen “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (1995) and played a glamour girl in the appropriately titled “The Stupids” (1996), co-starring Tom Arnold, followed by an unsuccessful bid for movie stardom as the female lead in the David Zucker-directed “BASEketball” (1998) opposite “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Perhaps her best role to date was as Sugar, a working girl in a Las Vegas brothel in the Kirk Douglas starrer “Diamonds” (1999), which was helmed by her husband-to-be John Asher, the son of veteran TV director John Asher (“I Love Lucy”) and actress Joyce Bulifont. She was cast as a haughty actress, one of the latest victims of the Ghostface Killer in the popular horror sequel “Scream 3″ (2000), and she would reunite with director Zucker for the third spoof of that film series, “Scary Movie 3″ (2003), in an amusing and provocative scene opposite her one-time off-screen rival and fellow Playmate-turned-star Pamela Anderson.
After giving birth to her first child and recounting her preganancy experiences in her bestselling 2004 book Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth (she previously penned a 1997 biography, Jen-X), McCarthy returned to the pages of Playboy a decade after her first appearance looking as sexy as ever, and she was tapped to star in the UPN sitcom “The Bad Girls’ Guide” (2005). She also accepted the inagural hosting duties for E! Entertainment’s Vegas-based bacchanal series “Party at the Palms” (2005), and wrote and produced the indie feature “Dirty Love” (2005), an over-the-top, gross-out-style relationship comedy directed by her husband and co-starring Carmen Electra. As a photographer driven to dating an assortment of weirdos and losers to push the buttons of her studly ex, McCarthy continually demonstrated her willingness to do just about anything to sell her jokes (including lifting her ban on nude scenes for a humorous sequence involving her bare breasts, and a maxipad-related sequence that would give even the Farrelly brothers pause), but her efforts were too frequently undercut by lackluster direction and production values, and a lack of genuine human emotion to fuel the otherwise amusing story. Shortly before the movie hit theaters in fall 2005, McCarthy announced her split from Asher.
- Born:
on 11/01/1972 in Chicago, Illinois
- Job Titles:
TV host, Actor, Comedian, Model, Meat slicer in Polish grocery store
Family
- Son: Evan Joseph Asher. born May 18, 2002; father is John Asher
Significant Others
- Companion: Jim Carrey. romantically linked since December 2005
- Husband: John Asher. British; born c. 1970; directed McCarthy in the film “Diamonds”; announced engagement in January 1999; married on September 11, 1999
- Companion: Ray Manzella. born c. 1948; separated c. 1998
- Companion: . was engaged at the time she posed for Playboy; broke up when McCarthy moved to L.A.
Education
- Southern Illinois University, psychology and nursing
- Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School, Chicago, Illinois
Milestones
- 1993 First appearance in Playboy (Miss October)
- 1994 Named Playboy Playmate of the Year
- 1995 Co-hosted MTV’s “Singled Out” dating game show
- 1995 Played Christopher Walken’s private nurse in “Things To Do in Denver When You’re Dead”
- 1996 Appeared in “The Stupids”
- 1996 Hosted ABC special “Extreme Comedy”
- 1997 Headlined MTV’s comedy-variety show, “The Jenny McCarthy Show”
- 1997 Starred in title role of NBC sitcom “Jenny”
- 1998 Starred with the creators of “South Park” in the comedy “BASEketball”
- 1999 Played a brothel employee in “Diamonds”, directed by John Asher
- 2000 Cast in Wes Craven’s “Scream 3″
- 2003 Starred with Pamela Anderson in the comedy “Scary Movie 3,” written by Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans
- 2005 Starred in the UPN comedy “The Bad Girl’s Guide” based on the self-help book by Cameron Tuttle
- 2005 Starred in the indie film “Dirty Love,” which marks her feature writing debut; directed by husband John Mallory Asher
- Appeared in a controversial advertising campaign for Candies shoes (print and television)
- Raised in Chicago, Illinois
