Background

Joy Behar was born on October 7, 1943, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, United States. She is the daughter of Gino and Rose Occhiuto. Her father was a truck driver at the Coca-Cola Company, while her mother was a seamstress.

Education

Joy Behar attended Washington Irving High School (now Washington Irving Campus). In 1964 she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queens College, City University of New York. In 1966 Behar obtained a Master of Arts degree from Stony Brook University.

Career

After nearly dying from an ectopic pregnancy in 1979, Joy Behar, then a junior high school English teacher, decided to follow her dreams of being in show business. She quit her teaching job and took one as a receptionist with the television program Good Morning America, hoping to get her foot in the door with a network. In the evenings, she performed at New York-area comedy clubs.

The Good Morning America job did not lead to greater things - in fact, Behar was fired in 1983 because she says, she tended to use her dry humor on callers who did not always appreciate it - but she became increasingly popular on the stand-up scene. By the late 1980s, her comedic success was beginning to earn her roles on television and in films. Behar transferred some of her stand-up material to print in Joy Shtick: or. What is the Existential Vacuum and Does It Come with Attachments? (1999). The book opens like a memoir, with Behar discussing the events in her life that propelled her into stand-up, but after that, she deals with the same issues that she covers in her comedy routines: the challenges of middle age. the antics of her Brooklyn-dwelling Italian-American family. the differences between men and women.

In 1984, she took part in The New Show, which ran briefly on NBC. Later that year, she was back on Good Morning America; this time as a guest star. In 1987, Behar got her own talk show, Way Off-Broadway, on Lifetime Television; but it ran for only one season. In the same year, she was a host on Live from Queens. Concurrently, she continued to perform at comedy clubs. Slowly other opportunities began to come her way. In 1988, she played the role of Helga Von Haupt in Baby Boom, a popular NBC sitcom series. In 1989, she appeared as Dottie in the comedy film, Cookie. Meanwhile, she continued to host a popular call-in radio show on New York's WABC and appeared on HBO comedy specials, One Night Stand.

Her popularity continued to grow in the early 1990s, and she was cast in Nora Ephron's film, This is My Life (1992) and Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery (1994). During this period, she also debuted on stage, appearing in the off-Broadway hits like The Food Chain (1995) and The Vagina Monologues (1996). In 1997, Behar became one of the original panel members of the ABC daytime talk show The View, which was co-created by Barbara Walters. Behar originally appeared only on the days when Walters was off, but she ultimately became a permanent co-host. Behar occasionally hosted a segment called Joy's Comedy Corner in which she presented both established and up-and-coming comedians.

She and the cast of female co-hosts earned their first Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show host in 2009. While she was still working at The View, she was also a guest host for Larry King Live before getting her own news/talk program on Headline News TV network in 2009. The Joy Behar Show aired between 2009 and 2011. She took her talk show personality to Joy Behar: Say Anything! on the Current TV network in 2012. It was canceled a year later when Current was purchased by Al Jazeera.

Joy Behar has taken the time to write books. Most reflect her comedic personality such as Joy Shtick (Or What is the Existential Vacuum and Does it Come with Attachments) in 1999 and The Great Gasbag: An A-to-Z Study Guide to Surviving Trump World which was published in 2017. She also wrote two children's books about a dog titled SheetzuCacaPoopoo. Joy Behar returned to The View in 2015. She also had a weekly late-night talk show on TLC titled Late Night Joy. Behar also lends her voice in animated films such as Ice Age: Continental Drift or appears as herself on various TV shows and movies.

Achievements

• Joy Behar is best known today as one of the co-hosts of The View, a popular television program that features a group of women discussing political and social issues. She has multiple nominations for her role as co-host on The View. She along with her fellow co-hosts has won an Emmy one time. In June 2016, she was inducted into the Brooklyn Walk of Fame at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Great Gasbag: An A-to-Z Study Guide to Surviving Trump World

    (One of our most beloved comedians, the brilliantly witty ...)

    2017
  • Sheetzu Caca Poopoo: My Kind of Dog

    (Comedian and talk-show host Joy Behar has teamed up with ...)

    2006
  • Sheetzucacapoopoo 2: Max Goes to the Dogs

    (In daytime-TV dynamo Joy Behar's follow-up to her New Yor...)

    2009
  • Joy Shtick or What is the Existential Vacuum and Does it Come with Attachments

    ("One of the funniest women in America" (New York Post), i...)

    1999
  • When You Need a Lift: But Don't Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin

    (Life is full of ups and downs. And while keeping your chi...)

    2007

• movie

  • Cookie

    (Paroled labor racketeer "Dapper" Dino is sought after by ...)

    1989
  • Love Is All There Is

    (The re-telling of Romeo and Juliet this time between Ital...)

    1996
  • This Is My Life

    (From the Macy's cosmetics counter to stand-up comic, sale...)

    1992
  • Hall Pass

    (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis are buddies whose long-suf...)

    2011
  • Ice Age: Continental Drift

    (Manny the Mammoth and his pals go on a high-seas quest ab...)

    2012
  • Hiding Out

    (A very succesful stock broker is called to court to testi...)

    1987
  • Manhattan Murder Mystery

    (Woody Allen and Diane Keaton reunite in this madcap myste...)

    1993
  • Tyler Perry's Madea Goes To Jail 2009

Religion

Raised Catholic, Joy Behar now identifies as agnostic. She told an ABC News' "Focus on Faith" interviewer in 2011, "I'm sustained by my family, my life, my brain. But I don't believe there's an afterlife."

Views

Joy Behar has supported charities, including the American Heart Association, the American Stroke Association, New York Restoration Project, and Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. Among Behar's charitable works, she played celebrity poker to raise money for the United States Fund for UNICEF.

Quotations: "I don't get jealous of people. Jealousy is such a waste of time because you're jealous of them, and they go about their lives and have a wonderful time, so what's the point?"

"I want a man in my life, not in my house."

"I am comfortable with myself, and this is how I am. I am not really interested in having an acrimonious fight with somebody."

Membership

Joy Behar is a member of Delta Zeta.

Personality

Joy Behar counts Tootsie (1982), The Birdcage (1996), and Unfaithful (2002) among her favorite movies and also loves World War II films such as Der Untergang (2004), etc. She frequently holds either a pen or her glasses in her right hand while talking. She is an excellent cook and makes fabulous lasagna. She hates hard-boiled eggs. They’re too gelatinous for her.

Interests

• cooking

Connections

In 1965 Joy Behar married Joe Behar, a college professor. They have a daughter, Eve Behar Scotti. In 1981 they divorced. In 1982 she met Steve Janowitz. In 2011 the couple married.

Father:

Gino Occhiuto

Mother:

Rose Occhiuto

Spouse:

Steve Janowitz

ex-spouse:

Joe Behar

Daughter:

Eve Behar Scotti

Friend:

Susie Essman

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2004
• The Page of Joy Behar on Twitter
• The Page of Joy Behar on Facebook