Jimmy Kimmel
James Christian Kimmel is an American television host and comedian. He is best known as the host and executive producer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which has aired on ABC since 2003. Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards three times, in 2012, 2016 and 2020, and the Academy Awards four times, in 2017, 2018, 2023, and 2024.
Before hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Kimmel was the co-host of Comedy Central's The Man Show and Win Ben Stein's Money. Kimmel has also produced several TV shows, including Crank Yankers, Sports Show with Norm Macdonald, and The Andy Milonakis Show. In 2018, Time named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Kimmel has the longest tenure of any current late-night television host in the United States. At 23 seasons, his tenure hosting a single late-night comedy-variety show is second only to Johnny Carson, who hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 seasons. After Kimmel commented on the assassination of Charlie Kirk in his monologue on September 17, 2025, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a week.
Early life and family
Kimmel was born in Brooklyn, New York City, and grew up in the neighborhood of Mill Basin. He is the eldest of the three children of Joan and James John Kimmel, who worked at American Express and was an IBM executive.He was raised Catholic and was an altar boy as a child. Kimmel's mother is of Italian descent; her grandparents migrated to the United States from Ischia, Naples, after the 1883 earthquake. Two of his paternal great-great-grandparents were German immigrants. His family's surname was several generations back. He obtained Italian citizenship in 2025.
He attended P.S. 236 elementary school before the family moved, when Kimmel was nine years old, to Las Vegas, where he befriended his neighbor Cleto Escobedo III, who would go on to be the bandleader on Jimmy Kimmel Live! He graduated from Ed W. Clark High School and attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for one year before his family moved to Arizona. He attended Arizona State University for the 1985–86 academic year and left without graduating. He received an honorary degree from UNLV in 2013.
Kimmel's uncle, Frank Potenza, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! as a regular from 2003 until he died in 2011. His cousin Sal Iacono performed Kimmel's former co-hosting duties during the last season of Win Ben Stein's Money and then became a writer and sketch performer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! His Aunt Chippy is also a featured part of the show. His brother Jonathan works on the show as a director. His sister, Jill, is a comedian.
Career
Radio career
Inspired by David Letterman's start in radio, Kimmel began working in radio while in high school. He was the host of a Sunday night interview show on UNLV's college station, KUNV. While attending Arizona State University, he became a popular caller to the KZZP-FM afternoon show hosted by radio personalities Mike Elliott and Kent Voss in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1989, Kimmel landed his first paying job alongside Voss as morning drive co-host of The Me and Him Show at KZOK-FM in Seattle, Washington. Over the next 10 months, the hosts performed several stunts on air, including one that led to the loss of an $8,000 advertising contract with the Seattle Mariners.In 1990, Kimmel and Voss were fired by KZOK and were fired again a year later at WRBQ-FM in Tampa. Kimmel went on to host his own show at KCMJ in Palm Springs, California, where he recruited as his intern Carson Daly, who had been a family friend since his childhood. After a morning stint at KRQQ in Tucson, Arizona, Kimmel landed at KROQ-FM in Los Angeles. He spent five years as "Jimmy The Sports Guy" for the Kevin and Bean morning show. During that time, he met and befriended the comedian Adam Carolla.
Comedy Central
Kimmel initially did not want to do television; he began writing for Fox announcers and promotions and was quickly recruited to do the on-air promotions himself. He declined several offers for television shows from producer Michael Davies, being uninterested in the projects, until he was offered a place as the comedic counterpart to Ben Stein on the game show Win Ben Stein's Money, which began airing on Comedy Central in 1997. His quick wit and "everyman" personality were counterpoints to Stein's monotonous vocal style and faux-patrician demeanor. The combination earned the pair an Emmy award for Best Game Show Host.In 1999, during his time on Win Ben Stein's Money, Kimmel co-hosted and co-produced Comedy Central's The Man Show. Kimmel left Win Ben Stein's Money in 2001 and was replaced by comedian Nancy Pimental, who was eventually replaced by Kimmel's cousin Sal Iacono. The Man Shows success allowed Kimmel, Carolla, and Kellison to create and produce, under the banner Jackhole Productions, Crank Yankers for Comedy Central and later The Andy Milonakis Show for MTV2. Kimmel also produced and co-wrote the feature film Windy City Heat, Festival Prize winner of the Comedia Award for Best Film at the 2004 Montreal Comedy Festival.
''Jimmy Kimmel Live!''
In January 2003, Kimmel permanently left The Man Show to host his own late-night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel Live! was created as a permanent replacement for Politically Incorrect, which ABC canceled in June 2002 following widespread condemnation and advertiser boycotts over host Bill Maher's comments during the political panel talk show's first new episode after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks suggesting that the perpetrators were not cowards, whereas " been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away".In April 2007, Stuffmagazine.com named Kimmel the "biggest badass on TV". Kimmel said it was an honor, but clearly a mistake. Despite its name, the show has not actually aired live since 2004, when censors were unable to properly bleep censor a curse word from Thomas Jane. During the 2004 NBA Finals in Detroit, Kimmel appeared on ABC's halftime show to make an on-air plug for his show. He suggested that if the Detroit Pistons defeated the Los Angeles Lakers, "they're gonna burn the city of Detroit down... and it's not worth it." Officials with Detroit's ABC affiliate, WXYZ-TV, immediately announced that that night's show would not air on the station. Hours later, ABC officials pulled that night's show from the entire network. Kimmel later apologized.
In a running gag that lasted for years, Kimmel would end his show with "My apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time." When Matt Damon did actually appear on the show to be interviewed in 2006, he walked in and sat down only to be told just a few seconds later by Kimmel, "Unfortunately, we are totally out of time," followed by "my apologies to Matt Damon." Damon appeared angry, but both performers have since indicated that their faux-feud is a joke. In February 2008, Kimmel showed a mock music video with a panoply of stars called "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" as "revenge" after his then-girlfriend Sarah Silverman and Damon recorded a similar video titled "I'm Fucking Matt Damon". Silverman's video originally aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live! going viral on YouTube. Kimmel's "revenge" video featured himself, Ben Affleck, and a large lineup of stars, particularly in scenes spoofing the 1985 "We Are the World" video: Christina Applegate, Lance Bass, Don Cheadle, Lauren Conrad, Cameron Diaz, Perry Farrell, Harrison Ford, Macy Gray, Josh Groban, Joan Jett, Dom Joly, Huey Lewis, Benji Madden and Joel Madden from Good Charlotte, Meat Loaf, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Dominic Monaghan, Brad Pitt, Rebecca Romijn, Mike Shinoda, Pete Wentz, and Robin Williams, among others.
Afterwards, Kimmel's sidekick, Guillermo Rodriguez, appeared in a spoof of The Bourne Ultimatum, which starred Damon. He was then chased down by Damon, who was cursing about Kimmel being behind all this. Guillermo also stopped Damon on the red carpet one time and, before he could finish the interview, said, "Sorry, we are out of time." The most recent encounter was titled "The Handsome Men's Club" which featured Kimmel, along with the "Handsome Men", who were: Affleck, Ted Danson, Patrick Dempsey, Taye Diggs, Josh Hartnett, Ethan Hawke, John Krasinski, Lenny Kravitz, Rob Lowe, Gilles Marini, Matthew McConaughey, Tony Romo, Sting and Keith Urban, speaking about being handsome and all the jobs that come with it. At the end of the skit, Kimmel has a door slammed in his face by Damon, who says they have run out of time and gives a sinister laugh. Jennifer Garner makes a surprise appearance. As a tradition, celebrities voted off Dancing with the Stars appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, causing Kimmel to describe himself as "the three-headed dog the stars must pass on their way to No-Dancing Hell."
In October 2013, a segment titled "Kids Table" showcased five- and six-year-olds discussing the U.S. government shutdown and U.S. debts. When one of the children suggested "killing all the people in China" as a way of resolving the U.S. debt, Kimmel responded that it was "an interesting idea" and jokingly asked a follow-up: "Should we allow the Chinese to live?" In an October 25 letter to a group called the 80-20 Initiative, which identifies itself as a pan-Asian-American political organization, ABC apologized for the segment, saying "We would never purposefully broadcast anything to upset the Chinese community, Asian community, anyone of Chinese descent or any community at large." More than a hundred people took to the streets in San Francisco on October 28 to protest the show and demand "a more elaborate apology" and that Kimmel be fired. On that day's broadcast, Kimmel addressed the controversy personally, saying: "I thought it was obvious that I didn't agree with that statement, but apparently it wasn't... So I just wanted to say, I'm sorry, I apologize." Despite the apologies from ABC and Kimmel, protests continued. A White House petition was created to investigate the incident and reached the 100,000 signatures needed to require a response from the White House. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus denounced the incident and demanded a formal apology from ABC.
In the summer of 2020, during the wake of George Floyd protests, Kimmel apologized for blackface impressions of media magnate Oprah Winfrey and basketball player Karl Malone in The Man Show, as well as using racial slurs in a 1996 song imitating Snoop Dogg. Kimmel apologized, "I believe that I have evolved and matured over the last 20-plus years" and that "I know that this will not be the last I hear of this and that it will be used again to try to quiet me". Footage resurfaced of a 2009 Kimmel interview with actress Megan Fox describing her sexualization on the set of Bad Boys II when she was 15-years-old, in response to which Kimmel made crude remarks.
While Kimmel and ABC had signed a three-year contract extension, running through the 2025–26 season, to continue his show in September 2022, he had considered ending the program just before the 2023 SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes. During a November 2022 appearance on Stitcher's Naked Lunch podcast, Kimmel revealed that he told ABC executives, soon after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, that if he could not tell Trump jokes, then he would leave the show. It appears the executives once spoke to Kimmel about laying off Trump, not to alienate Republican viewers. Kimmel said ABC executives were right in their apprehension, as he estimates he lost around half of his audience due to Trump jokes. Kimmel and Trump's feud is years-long, dating back to at least 2015, when then-presidential candidate Trump cancelled a scheduled appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, citing a prior obligation. On his part, Kimmel has been a relentless critic of President Trump since his first term, declaring, "One of the most fun parts of my job is knowing that he hates being made fun of, and making fun of him." This culminated with Kimmel reading and mocking a Truth Social post by then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump at the closing of the 96th Academy Awards ceremony in March 2024. Kimmel defended Stephen Colbert when his late talk show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, was cancelled, calling Paramount's cited reasons "nonsensical".