Biography

Jennifer “Jenny” McCarthy was born on November 1, 1972 in Chicago, Illinois. Her Catholic, middle-class family lived in the West Elsdon neighborhood and is the second of four daughters to Linda and Dan McCarthy. Her mother worked as a courtroom custodian while her father worked as a steel mill foreman. She attended school at the St. Turibius Grade School on Chicago’s South Side and as a teenager she enrolled at the Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School. Jenny often referred to herself as an “outcast” since she was a cheerleader for two school establishments namely the Brother Rice High School and St. Laurence High School. McCarthy went on to pursue her studies and took up a Nursing course at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale, since she needed the money to finish college, she decided to submit her picture to Playboy magazine and hoped to earn enough money to pay for her college tuition. Lady luck smiled on this blonde babe and she was eventually accepted and became a Playboy bunny in 1993.

After being accepted to become a model for the men’s magazine, Playboy wanted Jenny to pose for their October issue and was offered a hefty sum of $30,000 for her pictorial. She was a huge success for the magazine and on that same year, Jenny became the Playmate of the Month and later the 1993 Playmate of the Year. McCarthy was enjoying her newfound success and popularity with Playboy that in 1994 she moved to Los Angeles and hosted for a time Playboy TV’s Hot Rocks which featured mainly on uncensored music videos.

Her immense popularity led Jenny to do a hosting stint for MTV in 1995 when they came up with this new dating game show called Singled Out. She left Hot Rocks and her hosting job for the music network was a huge success and at the same time Playboy still wanted her to continue modelling for them. This somehow led McCarthy to be doing an appearance in WrestleMania XI as a guest for Shawn Michaels. In 1996, Jenny landed a small role in the comedy flick The Stupids where she showed off her zany and funny side as a comedienne. 1997 was definitely Jenny’s year as she hosted two shows, one was with MTV where they gave the towering blonde her own comedy sketch show entitled The Jenny McCarthy Show which was a runaway success that NBC found great interest in McCarthy that they signed her up for her own sitcom called Jenny. But things were not looking bright for her TV career that year as the sitcom suffered poor ratings and bleak viewership sharings that it became a big disappointment for NBC and they decided to sack the show and get it off the air completely. Jenny moved on to do her autobiography entitled Jen-X and at the same time went back to Playboy and did one of two covers for their September issue where the other model featured was Baywatch’s Pamela Anderson.

Jenny starred in another comedy flick called BASEketball in 1998 and in 1999 she appeared in a movie called Diamonds which was directed by then husband John Mallory Asher. She also appeared in the horror thriller Scream 3 in 2000 and the following year, Jenny made several TV guestings for such shows like Charmed, Just Shoot Me!, The Drew Carey Show and many more. In 2003, she goes back to the silverscreen and starred in the horror spoof Scary Movie 3 alongside fellow Playboy Playmate and fast-rising sexy actress Pamela Anderson. She was back on track and returned to her television hosting when E! Entertainment gave her a new reality show called Party at the Palms which was shot entirely at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas. In March of 2006, Jenny was given a string of nominations by the Razzie’s for which she bagged every category for the Worst Actress, Worst Screenplay and Worst Picture in her role for the movie Dirty Love which was directed again by her ex-husband John Asher, who also won a Razzie Award for Worst Director for the same movie.

Jenny McCarthy continued her ties with Playboy over the years both as a model and as a celebrity photographer for the men’s magazine for which she was the second female photographer (Carmen Electra being the first) and the very first Playmate to work for the Playboy Cyber Club. Her younger sister Amy followed in her sister’s footsteps and became the Cyber Girl of the Week for January of 2005.

The tall and funny sex symbol is currently doing voice characterization for a Canadian Sci-Fi cartoon series called Tripping the Rift and is doing a five-episode online series for MSN called In The Motherhood. It was only until recently Jenny admitted on the Ellen DeGeneres Show that she and comedian Jim Carrey had been living together and that they have no plans of getting married. The two started dating in December of 2005 and the couple kept quiet about their relationship until they went public on June 2006.