Jennifer McCarthy

Jennifer McCarthy was born on November 1, 1972, in Chicago, Illinois, to an Irish Catholic family. She is the second of four daughters, and her mother, Linda, was a housewife, while her father, Dan, was a steel mill foreman.

In 1992, Jenny McCarthy was scrambling money to pay for her second year of nursing studies at Southern Illinois University. So she sent her photo to Playboy and was accepted to model for the magazine in 1993.

jenny mccarthy in playboy
Jenny posed for the October 1993 issue of the magazine and was paid $30,000 for the job. Her modeling career suddenly took off as she was named Playmate of the Month, and then Playmate of the Year in 1994.

In 1994, Jenny decided to leave her hometown of Chicago in search of stardom, and landed in Los Angeles.
jenny mccarthy hosts singled out
She had a difficult time finding work in Hollywood, and it took incessant badgering from Ray Manzella, who at the time was Jenny's live-in boyfriend and manager. She finally got an interview at MTV and landed a cohosting position on the network's Singled Out. She was an immediate success, and handled hungry contestants with incurring (or committing) bodily harm.

Jenny McCarthy received permission to reformat the show to the format that best suited her talents. She became a full-fledged VJ getting paid an impressive $500,000 for the year. Jenny decided to leave Singled Out in 1997 and focus her efforts on creating a new MTV sketch-variety series, The Jenny McCarthy Show.

Also in 1997, Playboy banked on Jenny's success by putting her on the cover of their magazine.
jenny mccarthy in baseketball
Jenny decided to move her TV successes to the big screen, and in 1998 she appeared in the movie BASEketball with Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

In January 1999, shortly after breaking up with Manzella, she began dating film director John Asher. The two married on September 11th of that year.
jenny mccarthy in scream 3
In 2000, Jenny continued her stint on the big screen with a role in Scream 3 alongside David Arquette and Neve Campbell.

In 2003, she appeared in Scary Movie 3 with fellow Playmate Pamela Anderson. In May of that same year, Jenny gave birth to her son, Evan Joseph.

In 2005, Jenny tried her hand at producing and writing with the film Dirty Love, which also starred Carmen Electra.
jenny mccarthy's party at the palms
Also in 2005, Jenny went back to her hosting roots for a show on E! called Party at the Palms. The reality show was filmed at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, and featured hotel guests and celebrities partying with McCarthy.

But while Jenny's carreer kept climbing, her personal life seemed to be on the rocks. She filed from divorce from Asher in August of 2005. However, the blonde bombshell didn't stay single for long, as she started dating funnyman Jim Carrey in December of that same year.

2006 saw Jenny appear in John Tucker Must Die alongside Brittany Snow and Sophia Bush. And in 2007, she announced that she would be writing a book on the subject of her son's autism called Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism.