Kathleen Mary Griffin (born November 4, 1960) is an American comedian and actress who has starred in television comedy specials and has released comedy albums. In 2007 and 2008, Griffin won Primetime Emmy Awards for her reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. She has also appeared in supporting roles in films.Griffin was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. In 1978, she moved to Los Angeles, where she studied drama at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and became a member of the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings. In the 1990s, Griffin began performing as a stand-up comedian and appeared as a guest star on television shows, including a supporting role on the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan (1996–2000).The Bravo reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List (2005–2010) became a ratings hit for the network and earned her two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Reality Program. Griffin has released six comedy albums, all of which received Grammy Award nominations.
Kathy Griffin Facts
- Born :November 4, 1960 (age 63)Oak Park, Illinois, US
- Medium: Stand-up television
- Years active :1980–present
- Genres:Observational comedy blue comedy black comedy improvisational comedy
- Subject(s): Popular culture current events Catholicism LGBTQ community Irish-American culture
- Spouse: Matt Moline
Kathy Griffin Early life
Kathleen Mary Griffin was born on November 4, 1960, in the Chicago suburb Oak Park, Illinois] to Mary Margaret “Maggie” Griffin (née Corbally, 1920 – 2020) and John Patrick Griffin (1916 – 2007), both of whom were first-generation Irish-Americans. Kathy Griffin has four older siblings; Kenny (died in the 2000s), Joyce (died 2017), Gary (died 2014), and John. Griffin described herself during her early years as “a kid who needed to talk, all the time”. Her brother Gary and her sister Joyce both died from cancer.
Griffin has released six comedy albums, all of which received Grammy Award nominations. Her first album For Your Consideration (2008) made her the first female comedian to debut at the top of the Billboard Top Comedy Albums chart. In 2009, she released her autobiography Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin. After being nominated for six years in a row for the Grammy for Best Comedy Album, she won the award in 2014.Griffin has recorded numerous standup comedy specials for HBO and Bravo. For the latter network, she has recorded sixteen television specials, breaking the Guinness World record for the number of aired television specials on any network] In 2011, she also became the first comedian to have four specials televised in a year.Griffin is an LGBTQ activist who supports same-sex marriage and the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. She has participated in two United Service Organizations (USO) tours. Griffin is known for her conversational style and statements about celebrities, religion and sexuality, including holding a mask stylized as Donald Trump’s severed head in 2017, which provoked a United States Secret Service investigation and later became the basis of her concert film A Hell of a Story
Kathy Griffin She would often visit her neighbors to tell them stories about her family; she has referred to those visits as her first live shows where she learned “the power of juicy material”. After most of her siblings had moved, Griffin developed a binge eating disorder.In her 2009 autobiography Official Book Club Selection, Griffin said she “still suffers [from food issues but has learned to “deal with them”.
Griffin’s eldest brother Kenny was a drug addict and homeless at various times; she said she was “afraid of him until the moment he died” because of his violent, abusive nature. When Kathy was seven, Kenny—who was twenty years older—would climb into her bed and whisper into her ears; Kathy did not tell her parents until she was in her twenties, at which point he admitted his pedophilia to them.
At elementary school, Griffin began to develop a dislike for organized religion because of the punishments she and other “vulnerable” students received from the nuns At her high school, she sought refuge in musical theater, playing roles such as Rosemary in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof During her senior year, she wanted to become a professional actor. Her first appearance on television was as an extra on a Chicago White Sox commercial, and she was signed with several Chicago talent agencies. At 18, Griffin persuaded her parents to move to Los Angeles to help her become famous.
At 19, Griffin attended a performance by the improvisational group The Groundlings. She said, “I thought this is where I want to be. This is the greatest thing in the world.”
Kathy Griffin Career
Griffin began performing in the early 1990s in the Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings. She went on to perform standup comedy and became part of the alternative comedy scene in Los Angeles. With Janeane Garofalo, she created a standup act called “Hot Cup of Talk”, which became the title of her 1998 solo HBO special.Griffin earned a number of television and film credits during the 1990s. She appeared in Julie Brown’s Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful, a Showtime parody of the 1991 Madonna film Truth or Dare. Griffin twice appeared as Susan Klein, a reporter on NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; it was her television sitcom debut.
On June 12, 2008, Griffin hosted the first Bravo! Canada A-List Awards, which included a parody of the “wardrobe malfunction” experienced by Janet Jackson in the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004. She also hosted the 2009 Bravo A-List Awards, which aired on April 15, 2009, and her Bravo special Kathy Griffin: She’ll Cut a Bitch aired beforehand. Shout! Factory released an extended version of the show on DVD in early 2010.
On September 8, 2009, Ballantine Books published Griffin’s memoir, titled Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin, which debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. A week prior, she released her second comedy album Suckin’ It for the Holidays; it was her second bid to win a Grammy Award.It was announced on November 3, 2009, that Griffin was to host ABC’s new show Let’s Dance, on which celebrity contestants would have re-enacted famous dance routines while competing for a $250,000 grand prize for their favorite charity.
Griffin hosted CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast on December 31, 2009, along with Anderson Cooper. As Cooper talked about the Balloon boy hoax, Griffin said “fucking”. Kathy Griffin Although Griffin was rumored to have been banned from future CNN broadcasts, she co-hosted the show with Cooper until 2017. In 2017, CNN terminated Griffin from its New Year’s Eve Broadcast after Griffin showed pictures of herself holding a bloody, model severed head resembling President Donald Trump.Griffin has also guest-starred in a 2009 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,Kathy Griffin playing a lesbian activist.
Since the 2008 presidential election, Griffin has made frequent jokes about Republican vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin and her family.On US television program Glee, Griffin parodied Palin posing as a judge at a regional singing competition. Griffin also made fun of Christine O’Donnell in the show by stating, “Before we start, I would like to say I am not a witch”.
Kathy Griffin On January 7, 2012, it was announced that Griffin would host a weekly one-hour talk show on the channel Kathy, which would consist of standup routines, “rant about pop culture”, and celebrity interviews.On April 8, 2013, during a live standup performance in Cincinnati, Ohio, Griffin announced that her show would not be renewed for a third season. She later confirmed it on her Twitter account. According to FOX 411, Bravo was planning to film several comedy specials starring Griffin after the show ended.
On June 13, 2014, it was announced that Griffin would host the 41st Daytime Emmy Awards.For the first time in the event’s four-decade history, the show bypassed a network television airing for a live online streaming media event The ceremony took place on June 22, 2014. Griffin’s performance was well received by critics
Kathy Griffin Controversies
Griffin said she was banned from appearing on several television shows including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The View.She was re-banned from The View after making a joke about Barbara Walters. She appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on September 11, 2007.Griffin made a joke during a 2005 E! televised event saying eleven-year-old actor Dakota Fanning had entered drug rehabilitation.
Emmy Awards controversy
Griffin, Michael McDonald and Karri Turner perform an improvisational skit for soldiers and airmen in Tikrit, Iraq, in 2006.
Kathy Griffin The second season of My Life on the D-List, which premiered June 2006, earned Griffin the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program, non-competition. She received it during the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which was hosted by Carlos Mencia and aired on E! in September. Griffin said,Now, a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Kathy Griffin He didn’t help me a bit. If it was up to him, Cesar Millan would be up here with that damn dog. So all I can say is suck it, Jesus, this award is my God now!
Griffin later said she meant this remark as a satire of celebrities who thank Jesus for their awards, especially artists who are controversial in their speech and actions, rather than as a slight on Jesus.The academy said her “offensive remarks will not be part of the E! telecast on Saturday night”. Griffin said she was fired from an appearance on Hannah Montana because of her Emmy acceptance speech.
Kathy Griffin Style of humor
Griffin developed her love of popular culture through her immediate and extended family, who were frequently commenting about the latest news. She said; “I may have been into The Brady Bunch like every other kid, but I also wanted to watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono on The Dick Cavett Show, and every minute of the Watergate hearings.Kathy Griffin It was fear of the dinner table that got me hooked.”She has also named her mother Maggie as influential in her consumption of pop culture, calling her “the ideal audience for the Hollywood dish”. Griffin named the character Rhoda Morgenstern of 1970s sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show as an influence.
Griffin established her career with candid observations of everyday life and her dating experiences, later focusing on mocking celebrities; her act currently consists of embellished stories involving celebrities. Griffin hopes people understand that no malice is intended by her humor. “I’m genuinely a fan of most of the people I trash in the act”, she said; “I really, really try and focus on making fun of people for their behavior. I’m not so into making fun of someone for the way they look, or something that’s out of their control.”
Griffin is sometimes the object of her own humor, particularly with regard to her D-list status. She portrays herself as a Hollywood outsider and has a group of close celebrity friends such as Rosie O’Donnell, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Gloria Estefan, and Lance Bass. Her longtime friendship with Bass was the catalyst for a feud between Griffin and gossip blogger Perez Hilton.
In 2007, Griffin commented on her aversion to making fun of celebrity friends; “There’s nothing I won’t do, but on the other hand I’m full of shit because that changes”. Griffin and Hilton ended their feud after the death of Griffin’s father, and Hilton appeared on an episode of Griffin’s show in 2007.
Kathy Griffin Personal life
Griffin is an atheist. Speaking to Sacramento’s Outword Magazine, Griffin said: ” …I think I’m getting more atheist because of the way the country is getting more into bible-thumping”. She also describes herself as a “non-believer”In her book Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin, Griffin said that while in high school, she fell away from the Roman Catholic Church. She considered becoming a Unitarian but was not sure what that would involve. On March 9, 2008, Kathy Griffin became an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church.
In a 2006 interview, Griffin said she does not drink alcohol.
Griffin is an opponent of LASIK eye surgery, having had a series of operations that left her partially blind in one eye with a visible eyeball deformity.
Griffin’s only sister, Joyce Patricia Griffin, died in September 2017, from an undisclosed form of cancer. Kathy had shaved her head in solidarity with her in late July. Her brother Gary died of esophageal cancer in 2014.Her estranged eldest brother, Kenny, died in October 2001 in their mother’s arms.
Kathy Griffin Her father, John Patrick Griffin, died of heart failure on February 17, 2007; he was 91 years old. The episode related to his death was aired on June 19, 2007. Her mother, Maggie Griffin, who was featured in her reality show, died on March 17, 2020. In a post on her social media accounts, Griffin stated, “I am gutted. My best friend. I am shaking. I won’t ever be prepared. I’m so grateful you guys got to be part of her life. You knew her. You loved her. She knew it. Oh, and OF COURSE she went on St. Patrick’s Day.”
She placed 17th on Oxygen’s 2007 list of “The 50 Funniest Women Alive”. In 2009, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.
Griffin resided in the Hollywood Hills from 2004 to 2016. Since then, she has resided in Bel Air.
Kathy Griffin In August 2021, Griffin announced that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer, despite not being a smoker, and needed to have half of her left lung removed.She underwent surgery the same month.
Kathy Griffin In April 2023, Griffin revealed she was diagnosed with an “extreme case” of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.