Joy Behar

Daytime Emmy® Award winner Joy Behar, one of the two original co-hosts of ABC's The View, along with Barbara Walters, is among today's leading comic talents. Whether performing standup comedy or interviewing politicians and artists, she is a comedic original and a leading woman both on stage and screen.

The View is the original forum where real women discuss relevant, everyday issues and share their daily, no-holds-barred opinions and lively, colorful conversations. The program premiered in August 1997, and is broadcast live weekdays from New York City. The View is the recipient of 28 Daytime Emmy® Awards, numerous Daytime Emmy Award nominations, including 11 consecutive nominations for Outstanding Talk Show and 12 consecutive nominations for Outstanding Talk Show Host. In August 2009, Daytime Emmy® awards history was made when The View hosts Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd were named Outstanding Talk Show Host. It was the first time in the 36 year history of NATAS that multiple talk show hosts received this honor. The women of The View have been nominated for 12 consecutive years in this category making this their first win.

Armed with an MA in English education from SUNY at Stony Brook, Ms. Behar originally began a career in teaching. She then set out to pursue comedy professionally and immediately received bookings from such famous New York clubs as Caroline's and Catch a Rising Star. She went on to win three MAC Awards and a CableACE Award.

On television Ms. Behar starred in her own cable series Love, Hate & Joy, headlined her own HBO special and was a regular on the series Baby Boom. Some of her television appearances include the voice of a hilariously neurotic patient on Dr. Katz, which won the CableACE Award, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, Real Time with Bill Maher, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Celebrity Poker Showdown, It's Gary Shandling's Show, Comic Relief 2006, Last Comic Standing, Bette, Spin City and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, All My Children, One Life to Live, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, SOAPnet's Relative Madness, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and most recently Ugly Betty. In addition to her co-host duties on The View, Ms. Behar currently hosts The Joy Behar Show, weeknights at 9:00 PM, ET/PT on HLN.

For three years Ms. Behar hosted a popular call-in radio show on WABC, where she discussed politics with a deadly humorous bent. Her film appearances include Cookie, with Peter Falk.  This Is My Life, directed by Nora Ephron, Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery and a cameo in Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail. In theater she had a successful run in the off-Broadway hit The Food Chain, earning rave reviews in the starring role, and also in the critically-acclaimed The Vagina Monologues.

In May 2009, The View hosts were chosen as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" by Time. In July, 2009 Forbes ranked The View #11 among "30 of the Most Influential Women in Media."

Ms. Behar, a frequent comedy headliner, was chosen by TV Guide as a "Personality of the Year" nominee for the Third Annual TV Guide Awards in January of 1991. Other honors include the Real Beauty Award from AWRT and Dove (2007), the Safe Horizon Champion Award (2001), the Gracie Allen Tribute Award from the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television (2000), and the New York City Public Advocate's Special Advocate Award for her outstanding friendship to the Gay community (2000).

In November 2005, Ms. Behar performed to a sold out crowd at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center as part of the annual New York Comedy Festival and, most recently, during her one woman show Bitchin' With Behar at New York's Zipper Theater.

Ms. Behar's second children's book Sheetzucacapoopoo: Max Goes to the Dogs (Dutton Juvenile, 2009) is the follow-up to her New York Times best seller Sheetzucacapoopoo: My Kind of Dog (Dutton Juvenile, 2006). Ms. Behar is the author of When You Need A Lift: But Don't Want to Eat Chocolate, Pay a Shrink, or Drink a Bottle of Gin (Crown Publishers, 2007) and the New York Times best seller Joy Shtick: or What Is the Existential Vacuum and Does It Come with Attachments? (Hyperion, 2000).