Jenny McCarthy

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Jenny McCarthy was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 1st, 1972. Though she studied nursing and psychology at Southern Illinois University, she had to drop out as money was tight. She approached Playboy’s Chicago headquarters. Seeing as blonde and curvy fit their ideal, she landed a gig. She became Miss October 1993 and then became 1994’s Playmate of the Year.

A move to Hollywood came next and Jenny was able to land some small roles on shows like Silk Stalkings, Mr. Show and Wings. Her big break came when she hosted MTV’s dating show Singled Out from 1995 to 1997. She caught people’s attention quite quickly as she was just as comfortable posing in a bikini (or nothing at all) as she was cracking a joke or doing a pratfall.

She left Singled Out in 1997. She had two short-lived series after that. The Jenny McCarthy Show was an MTV sketch comedy show, while Jenny was an NBC sitcom with co-stars Heather Dubrow and George Hamilton. That show only lasted seventeen episodes. In 1998, she appeared with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the comedy BASEketball.

1999 saw McCarthy appear in Diamonds with Kirk Douglas and Dan Aykroyd. She appeared in Scream 3 with Neve Campbell Campbell and Courteney Cox in 2000. She also appeared in a few episodes of the sitcom Just Shoot Me! opposite David Spade. In 2003, she had a three episode arc on the Sara Rue sitcom Less Than Perfect. She also had multi-episode appearances on One on One and Hope & Faith with Faith Ford and Kelly Ripa. She also appeared in the spoof Scary Movie 3.

In 2005, she appeared in the short-lived series The Bad Girl’s Guide opposite Marcelle Larice, Christina Moore, Stephanie Childers, and Johnathan McClain. That same year, she hosted Party @ The Palms, which gave people a behind the scenes look at the Vegas nightspot.

Guest appearances, video games and web series followed. She did play the con artist Courtney, a love interest to Charlie Sheen, in six episodes of Two and a Half Men in 2010. She hosted season two of the reality show Love in the Wild in 2012.

Further hosting was in the cards for 2013. She hosted the VH1 talk show The Jenny McCarthy Show but it was canned after fifteen episodes. She then joined Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd and Barbara Walters on the daytime talk show The View, but her stint there only lasted one season.

On the personal side, she married Diamonds director John Asher in 1999. The pair had a son, Evan, in 2002, but their divorce was finalized in 2006. Evan was diagnosed with autism. McCarthy has often been labelled as the spokesperson for the anti-vaccine movement and its unconfirmed claims linking them to autism. She has since tried to clarify that she is not necessarily anti-vaccine but rather opposed to the amount and timing of vaccines given.

McCarthy married actor Donnie Wahlberg in 2014 and the pair appeared together in the reality series Donnie Loves Jenny in 2015.

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