- In full:
- James Christian Kimmel
- Awards And Honors:
- Emmy Award (2026)
Jimmy Kimmel
What is Jimmy Kimmel best known for?
Why was Jimmy Kimmel Live! taken off the air in 2025?
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Jimmy Kimmel (born November 13, 1967, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is an American late-night talk-show personality, producer, and comedian best known as the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2003– ). He also is a frequent host of various award ceremonies. In 2025 he was briefly taken off the air after comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The move prompted a national debate over free speech rights.
Explore Jimmy Kimmel’s role in the development of political humor in the United States.
Early life
Kimmel was raised in Las Vegas, where he spent his childhood cultivating a love of pranks and practical jokes, which served as unlikely training for future television hijinks. Inspired by his idol David Letterman, Kimmel began hosting an interview show on a local college radio station while he was still in high school. He briefly attended college—first at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and then at Arizona State University—before leaving to host The Me and Him Show, a morning radio program in Seattle. It was the first in a succession of radio jobs he would be fired from over the next several years, a fate he blamed on his constant office pranks.
Win Ben Stein’s Money and The Man Show
In 1994 Kimmel joined The Kevin & Bean Show, a morning show on Los Angeles radio station KROQ, first as a producer and then as an on-air personality blending sports and humor as Jimmy the Sports Guy. From 1997 to 2002 Kimmel appeared alongside Ben Stein on the television game show Win Ben Stein’s Money. Kimmel’s adolescent sense of humor complemented Stein’s dry delivery, and the cohosts were awarded the Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding game-show host in 1999.
Beginning in 1999, Kimmel and Adam Carolla cohosted The Man Show, a talk show aimed at young male audiences with a mix of scantily clad women and irreverent humor. It developed a dedicated following over the following four years, becoming one of the most successful shows on the Comedy Central network. During that period Kimmel, Carolla, and Daniel Kellison formed the production company Jackhole Industries and produced such hits as the puppet prank-call show Crank Yankers (2002–07).
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Jimmy Kimmel Live! debuted in 2003 after Kimmel was selected over several other popular potential hosts to fill the ABC television network’s 12:05 am time slot. The show was slow to take off, initially suffering from low ratings and difficulty attracting guests, as Kimmel worked to shed the frat-boy image he had established as a host of The Man Show. However, he differentiated himself from late-night rivals Letterman and Jay Leno with his show’s edgy content, and he gradually attracted a large following, particularly among younger viewers. Popular recurring comedy segments included “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets,” in which celebrities read aloud insulting comments written about them on Twitter, and “This Week in Unnecessary Censorship,” where innocuous words were bleeped out of clips as though they were profanities. Kimmel also included his family members Cousin Sal and Aunt Chippy in several recurring bits, many of which involved pranks that he played as a child. In 2013 ABC moved Jimmy Kimmel Live! to an earlier time slot, where it competed directly with The Tonight Show and The Late Show with David Letterman.
On Sept. 17, 2025, ABC announced that it was taking Kimmel’s show off the air “indefinitely” in response to comments Kimmel made regarding the suspect in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The suspension of Kimmel came hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, appeared on a conservative podcast on which he seemed to suggest that ABC and its parent company, Disney, could face sanctions for violating government rules. The Carr comments and Kimmel suspension sparked fierce debate over the First Amendment and the rights to free speech.
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On Sept. 23, Kimmel returned to the air on about 80 percent of ABC stations. The remainder of the local stations, owned by Sinclair Broadcasting and Nexstar, refused to broadcast the program. In what had been described as one of the most-anticipated late-night monologues in television history, Kimmel addressed the controversy. His voice was choked with emotion when he said, “You understand that it was never my intention to make light of a murder of a young man.” He drew applause when he said, “This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.”
In April 2026, Kimmel again found himself in hot water with the Trump administration when he delivered a monologue meant to roast the president in advance of the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. In one joke, he referenced first lady Melania Trump as having “the glow of an expectant widow.” Two days later a gunman launched a failed assassination attempt against Pres. Donald Trump at that dinner, and Trump called the Kimmel joke “really shocking.” Kimmel said the joke was in reference to the president’s age (he was 79 at the time) and not a call to violence. But Carr ordered an investigation into ABC’s broadcast licenses, citing the network’s policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Other work
Kimmel appeared in films and TV shows, often portraying himself. He also lent his voice to the animated comedies The Boss Baby (2017) and The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021). In addition, he hosted various awards shows, including the Emmys (2012, 2016, and 2020) and the Oscars (2017, 2018, 2023, and 2024). In 2020 he became host of a celebrity version of the prime-time game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; he won an Emmy Award for best game show host in 2026.