Chelsea Handler

Her American father was Ashkenazi Jewish; her German mother, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1958, was a Mormon.

Commenting on her religious upbringing, Handler said: "I grew up as a Jew and a Mormon... I chose Jewish obviously. Mormonism is so ridiculous. But I related to... that conflict of religion for both parents."

Handler was raised in Reform Judaism, and had a Bat Mitzvah ceremony.

Chelsea Joy Handler (born February 25, 1975) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, writer, television host, and producer.

Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1989 and battled the disease for over 15 years before dying of it in 2006.

This made Handler the second woman in the history of the VMAs to be the sole host of the ceremony, after Roseanne Barr, who hosted in 1994.

Handler was a member of the all-female cast of Oxygen's hidden camera reality television series Girls Behaving Badly, which aired from 2002 to 2005.

Other shows on which Handler has appeared include Weekends at the D.L., The Bernie Mac Show, My Wife and Kids, and The Practice.

She was 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 episode aired, saying later that she left "because I smelled the disaster happening before it did."

The show, produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, was a competition for aspiring filmmakers vying for a chance at stardom.

It lasted one season.

Handler was replaced by former Robin & Company entertainment anchor Adrianna Costa.

In April 2006, Handler began hosting The Chelsea Handler Show on E!, which lasted two seasons.

She hosted the late-night talk show Chelsea Lately on the E! network from 2007 to 2014 and released a documentary series, Chelsea Does, on Netflix in January 2016.

In 2007, Handler performed with Comedy Central's Hour Stand-Up Comedy Tour across the United States.

Her stand-up comedy has also been televised on VH1's Love Lounge, Comedy Central's Premium Blend, and HBO's broadcast of the Aspen Comedy Festival.

She was a guest on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld and The View, and she co-hosted The View on August 2, 2007, and September 5, 2008.

In July 2007, Handler began starring in her own half-hour late-night comedy series on E! titled Chelsea Lately.

The show proved to be a hit by averaging more than a half-million viewers and having clips on YouTube with more than one million views.

In a 2008 interview, Handler said, "The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is."

Chelsea Lately was broadcast weekdays on the E! Network in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, and New Zealand.

On August 18, 2010, it was announced that Handler would be the host of the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).

The announcement was surprising to many, including MTV representatives, who claimed that the final decision was unexpected.

The event took place at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on September 12, 2010.

After Lately debuted on E! on March 6, 2011.

Guest stars included Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Jay Leno, Tori Spelling, Jenny McCarthy, Sharon Osbourne, Dave Grohl, Johnny Knoxville, and Jane Fonda.

In 2012, Time named Handler one of the 100 most influential people in the world on its annual Time 100 list.

Handler was born in Livingston, New Jersey, the youngest of six children of Rita (née Stoecker), a homemaker, and Seymour Handler, a used-car dealer.

As an adult, she discovered that her maternal grandfather served in the German army during World War II, on the TLC series Who Do You Think You Are? in 2013.

She summered in Martha's Vineyard, where her parents owned a house.

She attended Livingston High School, where she was a reluctant student who objected to the school's "student-teacher-asshole ratio".

Handler has two sisters and three brothers; her eldest brother, Chet, died when he was 21, in a hiking accident in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

She was nine years old at the time.

At age 19, she moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, where she lived in her aunt's home, in Bel Air, and pursued acting while working as a waitress to support herself.

At 21, Handler decided to pursue stand-up comedy after telling her story about being arrested for driving under the influence to a class of other offenders, who found it funny.

After more than 1,000 episodes, the final episode of Chelsea Lately aired on August 26, 2014.

The show had a spinoff, the mockumentary After Lately, in which the various cast members, writers, crew, guests and even "hangers-on" of Chelsea Lately were shown bickering over trivial matters and competing for airtime on the show.

They also were shown seeking personal approval from Handler, who appeared in very few scenes of the program and was always portrayed as having open and utter disdain for everyone beneath her.

From 2016 to 2017, Handler hosted the talk show Chelsea on Netflix.