Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 13, 1967, Jimmy Kimmel is an American talk show host, producer, and comedian who gained notoriety as the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! from 2003 until the present.
Additionally, he frequently hosts a variety of award ceremonies.
Early life
Growing up in Las Vegas, Kimmel developed a fondness for practical jokes and pranks, which ironically prepared him for his future antics on television.
While still in high school, Kimmel started presenting an interview show on a local college radio station, inspired by his idol David Letterman.
Before moving to Seattle to broadcast The Me and Him Show, a morning radio show, he briefly attended college, first at Arizona State University and later at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
It was the first of several radio gigs he would lose over the next few years, which he attributed to his incessant office jokes.
Win The Man Show and Ben Stein’s Money
Kimmel began working as a producer on The Kevin & Bean Show, a morning programme on Los Angeles radio station KROQ, in 1994.
Later, he became Jimmy the Sports Guy, an on-air presenter who mixed humour and sports.
Kimmel costarred with Ben Stein in the game show Win Ben Stein’s Money on television from 1997 until 2002.
Stein’s acerbic style was matched by Kimmel’s teenage sense of humour, and the two cohosts won the 1999 Daytime Emmy Award for best game-show host.
Starting in 1999, Kimmel and Adam Carolla cohosted The Man programme, a chat programme with a combination of irreverent comedy and scantily clad ladies that catered to young male listeners.
Over the course of the next four years, it gained a devoted fan base and rose to prominence as one of Comedy Central’s most popular programmes.
View this post on Instagram
Kimmel, Carolla, and Daniel Kellison founded Jackhole Industries during that time, creating popular shows including the puppet prank-call series Crank Yankers (2002–07).
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Jimmy Kimmel Live! made its premiere in 2003 when Kimmel was chosen to anchor the ABC television network’s 12:05 AM show over a number of other well-liked candidates.
In the early going, Kimmel struggled to draw viewers and maintain the show’s poor ratings while trying to break the frat-boy persona he had developed as The Man Show’s host. But his show’s edgier tone set him apart from late-night competitors Letterman and Jay Leno, and he quickly acquired a sizable audience, especially among younger viewers.
Popular comic segments that aired on a regular basis included “This Week in Unnecessary Censorship,” wherein words that were bleeped out of clips as though they were profanities, and “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets,” in which celebrities read aloud derogatory remarks sent about them on Twitter.
In numerous recurring segments, Kimmel also featured his relatives Aunt Chippy and Cousin Sal, many of which featured tricks he had pulled as a kid.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! was directly in competition with The Tonight Show and The Late Show with David Letterman until ABC shifted it to an earlier time slot in 2013.
View this post on Instagram
Additional work
Kimmel frequently played himself in his appearances in TV series and films. Additionally, he provided the voice of Boss Baby in the 2017 animated comedy and Boss Baby: Family Business in 2021 animation comedy.
He also hosted a number of award programmes, such as the Oscars (2017, 2018, 2023, and 2024) and the Emmys (2012, 2016, and 2020).
He started hosting a celebrity edition of the popular game programme Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in 2020.
Might be leaving Jimmy Kimmel Live
Jimmy Kimmel makes a suggestion that he might be leaving late-night television as soon as his ABC contract expires.
The comic talked about feeling like it’s almost time to quit Jimmy Kimmel Live! in a recent interview.
As Kimmel stated to the Los Angeles Times, “I think this is my final contract. I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now — each time I think that, and then it turns out to be not the case. I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good. That seems like enough.”
“It’s hard to yearn for it when you’re doing it,” he said. “Wednesday night, I was very tired and I had all these scripts to go through — I had to revise and rewrite all these pitch ideas for the Oscars — and I was literally nodding off onto my computer. In those moments, I think, ‘I cannot wait until my contract is over.’ But then, I take the summer off or I go on strike, and you start going, ‘Yeah, I miss the fun stuff.’”
Kimmel doesn’t currently have a plan, so he has more than two years left on his current deal to consider his options.
Kimmel remarked, “I don’t know exactly what I will do. It might not be anything that anyone other than me is aware of. I have a lot of hobbies — I love to cook, I love to draw, I imagine myself learning to do sculptures. I know that when I die, if I’m fortunate enough to die on my own terms in my own bed, I’m going to think, ‘Oh, I was never able to get to this, and I was never able to get to that.’ I just know it about myself.”