McCarthy in 2006
Born Jennifer Ann McCarthy
November 1, 1972 (age 39)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation Actress, comedian, model, author, activist
Years active 1993–present
Spouse John Mallory Asher
(1999–2005; 1 child)
Partner Jim Carrey
(2005–2010)
Jennifer Ann "Jenny" McCarthy (born November 1, 1972) is an American model, comedian, actress, author, activist, and game show host. 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 successful television and film acting career. Most recently, she has written books about parenting, and has become an activist promoting the claims that vaccines cause autism and that chelation therapy helps cure it—both claims are considered false by the medical community.
Early life
McCarthy was born in Evergreen Park, Illinois to a middle-class Catholic family of Polish and Irish descent. 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.
Modeling and acting
Jenny McCarthy
Playboy centerfold appearance
October 1993
Preceded by Carrie Westcott
Succeeded by Julianna Young
Playmate of the Year
1994
Preceded by Anna Nicole Smith
Succeeded by Julie Lynn Cialini
Personal details
Born 1 November 1972
Measurements Bust: 38 in (97 cm)
Waist: 24 in (61 cm)
Hips: 34 in (86 cm)
Height 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)
Weight 120 lb (54 kg)
After getting accepted by Playboy in 1993, the magazine offered McCarthy $20,000 to pose for its October issue. McCarthy became the Playmate of the Month and later 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, MTV chose McCarthy to be the host of a new dating show called Singled Out, for which 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."
In addition to her early TV fame on MTV and her short-lived, self-titled NBC sitcom, McCarthy has guest starred in a variety of other television shows including Stacked, Charmed, The Drew Carey Show, Wings, Fastlane, Two and a Half Men and Just Shoot Me!. She was the voice of Six in the third season of Canadian computer-animated science fiction cartoon Tripping the Rift. In 2005, McCarthy hosted a show on E! called Party at the Palms. The reality show, which was filmed at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, featured hotel guests, party goers, and celebrities.
McCarthy has continued her work with Playboy over the years, both as a model and in other capacities. She appeared on the cover of the magazine's January 2005 issue wearing a leopard skin version of the company's iconic "bunny suit" and was featured in a pictorial shot at Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion in that same issue. She was the second woman (following Carmen Electra) and first former Playmate to become a celebrity photographer for the Playboy Cyber Club, where she photographed model Jennifer Madden.
Jenny's younger sister Amy has also posed for Playboy. She was Cyber Girl of the Week for September 27, 2004, and Cyber Girl of the Month for January, 2005.
McCarthy currently stars in a five-episode online series, called In the Motherhood, along with Chelsea Handler and Leah Remini. The show is on MSN and is based on being a mother where users could submit their stories to have it made into real webisodes.
She has also appeared in two video games: playing the role of Agent Tanya in the video game Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, replacing Kari Wührer, and the fitness video game Your Shape Featuring Jenny McCarthy.
She is the host of season 2 of Love in the Wild, which begins on June 7, 2012.
Public persona
April 4, 2005
McCarthy once modeled for Candie's, a shoe company. In one magazine ad, McCarthy posed on a toilet seat with her underwear near her ankles. Cultural scholar Collin Gifford Brooke wrote that the ad's "taboo nature" brought it attention, while noting that the ad itself helped to weaken that taboo. Another Candie's ad depicted McCarthy passing wind in a crowded elevator.
A sketch on her MTV show centered on her character, a well-coiffed business woman, answering the question of "What did you have for lunch?" by seeming to force herself to vomit all over a table which she then ate. This was faked using special effects.
This theme was taken to a new extreme in her film Dirty Love, which featured McCarthy's character sitting in a massive pool of her own menstrual blood.
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. Evan was diagnosed with autism. 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 she began dating Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.
Activism and autism controversy
Jenny McCarthy speaking at the 2008 Ante Up For Autism benefit
In May 2007, McCarthy announced that her son Evan was diagnosed with autism in 2005. Before claiming that her son's autism was caused by vaccination, McCarthy wrote that he was gifted, a "crystal child", and she an "indigo mom". Evan's disorder began with seizures and his improvement occurred after the seizures were treated, symptoms experts have noted are more consistent with Landau–Kleffner syndrome, often misdiagnosed as autism. McCarthy served as a spokesperson for Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) from June 2007 until October 2008. She participated in fundraisers, online chats, and other activities for the non-profit organization to help families affected by autism spectrum disorders. Her first fundraiser for TACA, Ante Up for Autism, was held on October 20, 2007, in Irvine, California. She is a prominent spokesperson and activist for the Generation Rescue foundation, and serves on its Board of Directors as of January 2011.
A study found 24% of parents placed "some trust" in information on vaccine safety from celebrities like Jenny McCarthy.
McCarthy's book on the subject, Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism, was published September 17, 2007. She stated both in her book and during her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show that her husband was unable to deal with their son's autism, which led to their divorce. In 2008, she appeared on a Larry King Live special dedicated to the subject, and argued that vaccines can trigger autism. In an April 27, 2010 PBS Frontline documentary, she was interviewed about the controversy between vaccine opponents and public health experts.
In addition to conventional, intensive Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy, McCarthy tried a gluten-free and casein-free diet, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, chelation, aromatherapies, electromagnetics, spoons rubbed on his body, multivitamin therapy, B-12 shots and numerous prescription drugs. McCarthy has stated on talk shows and at rallies that chelation therapy helped her son recover from autism. The underlying rationale for chelation, the speculation that mercury in vaccines causes autism, has been roundly rejected by scientific studies, with the National Institute of Mental Health concluding that autistic children are unlikely to receive any benefit to balance the risks of heart attack, stroke and cardiac arrest posed by the chelating agents used in the treatment.
McCarthy's public presence, and vocal activism on the vaccination-autism controversy, led, in 2008, to her being awarded The James Randi Educational Foundation's Pigasus Award (granted for contributions to pseudoscience) for the 'Performer Who Has Fooled The Greatest Number of People with The Least Amount of Effort'. Randi stated in a video on the JREF's website that he did sympathize with the plight of McCarthy and her child, but admonished her for using her public presence in a way that may discourage parents from having their own children vaccinated.
McCarthy's claims that vaccines cause autism are not supported by any medical evidence, and the original paper by Andrew Wakefield that formed the basis for the claims (and for whose book McCarthy wrote a foreword) has been shown to be based on manipulated data and fraudulent research. The BMJ published a 2011 article by journalist Brian Deer, based on information uncovered by Freedom of Information legislation after the British General Medical Council (GMC) inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield that led to him being struck-off from the medical register (unable to practice medicine in the UK) and his articles retracted, stating that Wakefield had planned a venture to profit from the MMR vaccine scare.
Parental concerns over vaccines have led to decreased immunization rates and increased incidence of whooping cough and measles, a highly contagious and sometimes deadly disease. Neil Cameron, a historian who specializes in the history of science, writing for The Montreal Gazette labeled the controversy a "failure of journalism" that resulted in unnecessary deaths, saying that The Lancet should not have published a study based on "statistically meaningless results" from only 12 cases and that a grapevine of worried parents and "nincompoop" celebrities fueled the widespread fears.
Generation Rescue issued a statement that the "media circus" following the revelation of fraud and manipulation of data was "much ado about nothing", which led USA Today to report that McCarthy had "taken a beating on Twitter". Salon.com responded to Generation Rescue's statement with:
"It's high time the woman who once said that 'I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe' took a step back and reconsidered the merits of that increasingly crackpot stance. And it's time she acknowledged that clinging to research that's been deemed patently fraudulent does not make one a 'mother warrior.' It makes her a menace."
In January 2011, McCarthy defended Wakefield, saying that he had listened to parents and that the controversy was "merely the allegations of a single British journalist named Brian Deer".
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