Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Joy Handler (born February 25, 1975) is an American comedian, actress, writer, television host, and producer. She hosted a late-night talk show called Chelsea Lately on the E! network from 2007 to 2014, and released a documentary series, Chelsea Does, on Netflix in January 2016. In 2012, Time placed her on the list of its 100 Most Influential People.

Early life

Chelsea Joy 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. Her American father is Jewish; her German-born mother, who came to the United States in 1958, was a Mormon. Her mother died of breast cancer in 2006. Handler was raised in Reform Judaism and had a Bat Mitzvah ceremony. She has said that while growing up she felt like an outsider, recalling, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood...Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto."

Handler has two sisters and three brothers; her eldest brother, Chet, died in a hiking accident in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming when she was 9 years old. At age 19, she moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, California, to pursue acting, and worked meanwhile as a waitress to support herself. At 21, Handler decided to pursue stand-up comedy after telling her story about a DUI to a class of other offenders, who found it funny.