My Horizontal Life (Handler)

Author Bio
• Birth—February 25, 1975
• Where—Livingston, New Jersey
• Currently—Los Angeles, California

Chelsea Handler is an accomplished stand-up comic and actress, as well as the bestselling author of My Horizontal Life. She is the star of her own late-night show on E!, Chelsea Lately; was one of the stars of Girls Behaving Badly; has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman; and has starred in her own half-hour Comedy Central special. Chelsea makes regular appearances in comedy clubs across America and lives in Los Angeles. (From the publisher.)

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Chelsea Handler is an American stand-up comedienne, humorist, television host, actress, and best-selling author. She currently has her own late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately, on the E! Cable Television Network. In 2009, she won a Bravo A-List Award. She also has her own column in the UK celebrity magazine Now.

Handler was born in the suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey to Rita and Seymour Handler. The youngest of six children, she was raised Jewish by her Mormon mother and Jewish father. Handler has said that while growing up, she felt like an outsider, telling a reporter, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood.... Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto." Her mother died of cancer.

Handler has performed nationwide as a stand-up comedian, appeared as a regular on the Oxygen Network series Girls Behaving Badly and on other shows, including Weekends at the D.L., The Bernie Mac Show and The Practice. She is 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 one was aired, as she later said, "because I smelled the disaster happening before it did." Chelsea Handler hosted The Chelsea Handler Show in April 2006, which lasted two seasons. She was a guest on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld and The View; she co-hosted The View on August 2, 2007, and again on September 5, 2008. On January 25, 2009, Handler was on the CBS gameshow Million Dollar Password as one of the celebrity players. On April 15, 2009, Handler won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for "A-List Funny."

Handler has authored two books on the New York Times Best Seller List. Handler wrote My Horizontal Life as her memoir. Handler also wrote Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, a collection of humorous essays. Are You There, Vodka hit the New York Times non-fiction best seller list on May 11, 2008; it has already had a print run of over 350,000. She released her third book titled Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang in March of 2010.

In 2007, Handler performed with the Hour Stand-Up Comedy Tour across the U.S.. Her stand-up has been televised on Vh1's Love Lounge, Comedy Central's Premium Blend, and HBO's broadcast of the Aspen Comedy Festival. Chelsea Handler was the host of the Fox show On The Lot. The show, produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett, is a competition for aspiring filmmakers who are vying for a chance at stardom. She was replaced after one episode by former Robin & Company entertainment anchor, Adrianna Costa.

In July 2007, Handler began starring on her own half-hour late-night comedy series on E! titled Chelsea Lately. This series places Handler against a slew of male-dominated talk shows, and adding a considerable amount of sarcasm and ridicule to the format. On the show's 100th episode, Chelsea revealed to viewers that E! had picked up Chelsea Lately for another 150 episodes. The show has proved a hit and averaged more than a half-million viewers since its premiere (much more than the average for a late night cable program) and has clips on Youtube with more than a million views. All this success is despite the fact that Handler's guests often are not A-list celebrities. In a 2008 interview Handler said, "The worse the guests are, the more pathetic they are, the funnier the show is.” The New York Times reported that Chelsea Lately has been renewed by E! to run until December 2009; Handler received another contract extension in March 2009 to keep Chelsea Lately on the air through 2012.

Since 2007, Handler has appeared in the Internet based program In the Motherhood with Leah Remini and (since January 2008) Jenny McCarthy. The comedic series is "about moms, by moms and for moms". On September 8, 2008, it was announced ABC would be turning In The Motherhood into a series starring Jessica St. Clair, Megan Mullaly, and Cheryl Hines. Handler decided to drop out of the project due to her scheduling commitments to her show Chelsea Lately. (From Wikipedia.)