Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel is an American TV host, comedian, and producer whose two-decade tenure as host of ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2003–present) has made him one of the figures of American late-night television. He was born James Christian Kimmel on November 13, 1967, in Brooklyn, New York City, into an Italian-Catholic family. The family relocated to Las Vegas when he was nine. He briefly attended Arizona State University before pursuing radio comedy in his early twenties.

His radio career through the 1990s included multiple morning-radio shows in Phoenix, Tampa, Tucson, and Palm Springs. His 1996 break came as the comedy sidekick on Fox Sports's Win Ben Stein's Money (1997–2002, where he co-hosted with the Ben Stein and won the 1999 Daytime Emmy Award). The 1999 launch of Comedy Central's The Man Show (with Adam Carolla) — which ran for four seasons and shaped the late-1990s American "laddish" comedy aesthetic — established his American TV-comedy presence.

His ABC late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! launched on January 26, 2003, as part of the ABC late-night lineup competing against the NBC Tonight Show and CBS's Late Show with David Letterman. The show has run continuously for over 22 years across 3,500+ episodes — making Kimmel one of the longest-tenured American late-night hosts in TV history. His late-night style — combining celebrity interviews, political commentary, comedy bits with the Cousin Sal, and Mean Tweets celebrity-Twitter-reading recurring segments — has shaped the 2000s and 2010s American late-night format.

Kimmel has hosted the Academy Awards four times (2017, 2018, 2023, 2024) and the Primetime Emmy Awards three times. The 2017 Oscars Best Picture envelope mix-up between La La Land and Moonlight — which Kimmel hosted — became one of the American Academy Awards moments of the 21st century. He has been with American comedian-and-writer Molly McNearney since 2009, and the couple has two children.

His name Jimmy is the English short form of James (from the Hebrew Yaaqov meaning "supplanter"). Jimmy has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.