Background and career
James Christian Kimmel (born November 13, 1967) 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.
Jimmy Christian Kimmel was born on November 13, 1967, in Brooklyn, New York City, and grew up in the neighborhood of Mill Basin. He is the eldest of the three children of Joan (née Iacono) 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 Kümmel ('caraway' in German) 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 (UNLV), 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.
How Jimmy Kimmel makes money
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.
