Jenny McCarthy

Jennifer Ann "Jenny" McCarthy (born November 1, 1972) is an American model, actress, author, and activist. She began her career in 1993 as a nude model for Playboy magazine and was later named their Playmate of the Year. McCarthy then parlayed her Playboy fame into a television and film acting career. She is currently a co-host on the ABC talk show, The View. McCarthy has written books about parenting, and has become an activist promoting research into environmental causes and alternative medical treatments for autism. She has claimed that vaccines cause autism and that chelation therapy helped cure her son of autism. Both claims are controversial and unsupported by any medical evidence, and her son's autism diagnosis is disputed. --- McCarthy was born in Evergreen Park, Illinois, to a working-class Catholic family, and has Irish, German, and Polish ancestry. She lived in the West Elsdon neighborhood of Chicago. She is the second of four daughters; her sisters are named Lynette, Joanne and Amy. Her cousin is Academy Award-nominated actress Melissa McCarthy of Bridesmaids and Mike and Molly. McCarthy's mother, Linda, was a housewife and courtroom custodian, and her father, Dan McCarthy, was a steel mill foreman. As a teenager, McCarthy attended Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School (whose school sweater she donned in the pages of Playboy) and was a cheerleader at both Brother Rice High School and St. Laurence High Schools, although she has referred to herself as an "outcast" at her school and has described how she was repeatedly bullied by classmates. In 1993, Playboy magazine offered McCarthy $20,000 ($31,785 in 2013 currency) to pose for its October issue. McCarthy became the Playmate of the Month for October 1993. Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner cites McCarthy's "wholesome Catholic girl" persona as the unique quality for which she was selected out of 10,000 applicants. Her layout emphasized her Catholic upbringing with a schoolgirl theme. According to McCarthy, the pictorial caused an uproar in her Catholic neighborhood, and resulted in her house being pelted with eggs, her sisters being taunted at school, and McCarthy, who counted Catholic nuns among her aunts, being lectured about her future damnation by those close to her. McCarthy was later made the Playmate of the Year, and was paid a $100,000 salary. In 1994, because of her newfound public attention, McCarthy moved to Los Angeles and, for a time, hosted Hot Rocks, a Playboy TV show featuring uncensored music videos. In 1995, when MTV chose McCarthy to be the host of a new dating show called Singled Out, she left Hot Rocks. Her job as a host was a success, and Playboy wanted her to do more modeling. That same year, she also appeared at World Wrestling Federation (WWF) pay-per-view event WrestleMania XI as a guest valet for villain Shawn Michaels, who faced heroic WWF Champion, Diesel. She left after the match with the victor, Diesel. McCarthy returned to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly the WWF) on the August 2, 2008 edition of Saturday Night's Main Event to thank the fans for supporting Generation Rescue, an autism advocacy organization. In 1996, she landed a small part in the comedy The Stupids. In 1997, McCarthy launched two shows. The first one was an MTV sketch comedy show The Jenny McCarthy Show, which was sufficiently popular for NBC to sign her for an eponymous sitcom later that year, Jenny. The latter show is generally considered a disappointment and was quickly canceled. Also in 1997, she appeared on one of two covers for the September issue of Playboy (the other cover featured Pamela Anderson). McCarthy also released an autobiography: Jen-X: Jenny McCarthy's Open Book. In 1998, McCarthy's first major movie role was alongside Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the comedy BASEketball. The following year, she starred in Diamonds, a movie which was directed by her then-husband John Mallory Asher. In 2000, she had a role in the horror movie Scream 3, and three years later she parodied that role in horror film spoof Scary Movie 3 along with fellow Playmate and actress Pamela Anderson. In 2005, McCarthy produced, wrote, and starred in the movie Dirty Love, where she was again directed by her husband at the time, John Asher. In March 2006, she was given Razzie Awards for "Worst Actress", "Worst Screenplay", and "Worst Picture" for her work on Dirty Love, which also earned Asher a Razzie for "Worst Director." --- McCarthy dated manager Ray Manzella from 1994 until 1998. McCarthy began dating actor/director John Mallory Asher late in 1998. The couple became engaged in January 1999, and married on September 11 of that year. They have a son, Evan Joseph, born on May 18, 2002, who was diagnosed with autism on May 10, 2005. McCarthy and Asher divorced in September 2005. In December 2005, McCarthy began dating actor Jim Carrey. They did not make their relationship public until June 2006. She announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on April 2, 2008 that she and Carrey were living together, but had no plans to marry, as they did not need a "piece of paper." Carrey almost made a mock proposal to McCarthy as a promotion to the film Yes Man for Ellen's Twelve Days of Holidays. McCarthy and Carrey announced that they had split up in April 2010. In April 2012, McCarthy began dating linebacker Brian Urlacher. In August 2012, McCarthy announced that she and Urlacher had ended their relationship. As of July 2013, she is currently dating Donnie Wahlberg.