Biography of Chelsea Handler

On Feb. 25, 1975, in Livingston, N.J. She’s the youngest of six siblings.

Chelsea began her show biz career as a comedienne. She was quickly playing comedy clubs nationwide and soon landed on television, as a featured player on the Candid Camera-style show Girls Behaving Badly and a guest actress on The Bernie Mac Show and The Practice.

Here biggest (basic cable) break came when she starred in the eponymous The Chelsea Handler Show on the E! channel. The skit comedy program, similar to Comedy Central’s defunct – but classic – Chappelle’s Show and TBS’s Frank TV, was a cult favorite and would eventually be replaced with Chelsea Lately.

Chelsea has taken to the job of talk show host surprising well. Her self-deprecating style plays well to the late night format – one might consider her a latter day David Letterman. And her show is unique, in that it combines the roundtable format of a show like Politically Incorrect and the standard across-the-desk celebrity interview. Guests – often B-listers and E! celebrities promoting their reality programs – have an affinity for Chelsea, and it shows.

Chelsea is in line to star in a new ABC series titled In the Motherhood with Megan Mullally and Cheryl Hines. The series is spun off the online-only program, which stars Chelsea, Leah (King of Queens) Remini and Jenny McCarthy. The show is touted as “about moms, by moms and for moms”. The series focuses on three mothers whose exploits are based on real-life stories from moms across the country.

• Chelsea is a New York Times bestselling author, having written the tomes My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea.

• Was the “one episode only” host of the quickly cancelled On the Lot, a reality program from Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett.

• Chelsea Lately is set to run into 2009.

• Claims she was asked to be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, but declined.

• Has running feuds with actresses Tori Spelling and Caroline Rhea.