- published: 06 Mar 2015
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Chelsea Joy Handler (born February 25, 1975) is an American comedian, actress, writer, television host, and producer. She hosted a late-night talk show called Chelsea Lately on the E! network from 2007 to 2014, and released a documentary series, Chelsea Does, on Netflix in January 2016. In 2012, Time placed her on the list of its 100 Most Influential People.
Chelsea Joy Handler was born in Livingston, New Jersey, the youngest of six children of Rita (née Stoecker), a homemaker, and Seymour Handler, a used car dealer. Her American father is Jewish; her German-born mother, who came to the United States in 1958, was a Mormon. Her mother died of breast cancer in 2006. Handler was raised in Reform Judaism and had a Bat Mitzvah ceremony. She has said that while growing up she felt like an outsider, recalling, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood...Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto."
Handler has two sisters and three brothers; her eldest brother, Chet, died in a hiking accident in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming when she was 9 years old. At age 19, she moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, California, to pursue acting, and worked meanwhile as a waitress to support herself. At 21, Handler decided to pursue stand-up comedy after telling her story about a DUI to a class of other offenders, who found it funny.
Black people is a term used in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification or of ethnicity, to describe persons who are perceived to be dark-skinned compared to other given populations. As such, the meaning of the expression varies widely both between and within societies, and depends significantly on context. For many other individuals, communities and countries, "black" is also perceived as a derogatory, outdated, reductive or otherwise unrepresentative label, and as a result is neither used nor defined.
Different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary. For example, in North America the term black people is not necessarily an indicator of skin color or majority ethnic ancestry, but it is instead a socially based racial classification related to being African American, with a family history associated with institutionalized slavery. In South Africa and Latin America, for instance, mixed-race people are generally not classified as "black." In South Pacific regions such as Australia and Melanesia, European colonists applied the term "black" or it was used by populations with different histories and ethnic origin.
Johnny Knoxville (born Philip John Clapp, Jr.; March 11, 1971), is an American actor, comedian, film producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer. He is best known as a co-creator and star of the MTV reality stunt show Jackass, which aired for three seasons from 2000–2002. A year later, Knoxville and his co-stars returned for the first installment in the Jackass film series, with a second and third installment being released in 2006 and 2010, respectively. In 2013, he starred in Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa as his Jackass character Irving Zisman. Knoxville has had acting roles in films like Men in Black II (2002), The Dukes of Hazzard, The Ringer (both 2005) and The Last Stand (2013), as well as having voiced Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014).
Knoxville was born Philip John Clapp, Jr. in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Philip Clapp, Sr., was a tire/car salesman, and his mother, Lemoyne Clapp (née Houck), taught Sunday school. Knoxville credits a copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, given to him by his cousin, singer-songwriter Roger Alan Wade, with giving him the acting bug. After graduating from South-Young High School in 1989 in Knoxville, he moved to California to become an actor. In the beginning, Knoxville appeared mostly in commercials and made several minor appearances as an extra. When the "big break" he sought eluded him, he decided to create his own opportunities by writing and pitching article ideas to various magazines. An idea to test self-defense equipment on himself captured the interest of Jeff Tremaine's skateboarding magazine Big Brother, and the stunts were filmed and included in Big Brother's "Number Two" video.