Kathy Griffin Biography

Kathy Griffin, comedienne

Birthdate: November 4, 1960

Birthplace: Oak Park, Illinois

Sign: Scorpio

Born Kathleen Griffin to a hospital administrator mother and an electronics store manager father, this Emmy Award-winning comedienne was raised Roman Catholic but now considers herself a "militant atheist." She is the youngest of five children.

In the early 1980s, Griffin began performing with The Groundlings, an L.A. improve comedy troupe. She was interested in the group even before joining them, as she had stated in one of her interviews.

After becoming part of the alternative comedy scene in the city, she was offered her own show, "Hot Cup of Talk," and went on to break into the film industry with a supporting role in the 1991 horror pic "The Unborn."

She had then appeared in several TV shows, including Will Smith's "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," her sitcom debut. But it was in 1996 that she had a regular sitcom job. She played Brooke Shields' colleague in the NBC sitcom "Suddenly Susan."

She served as an unofficial guest co-host on the talk show "The View" from May to September 2007. She was being considered as replacement for Rosie O'Donnell, but the spot eventually went to Whoopi Goldberg. She had revealed that she is now banned from the show after she talked about the gig on one of her comedy shows.

Her acerbic humor landed her her own solo reality show, "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List," in 2005. The show earned her the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program.

Griffin was married to Matt Moline in February 2001. They divorced in 2006, her accusations that Moline stole $72,000 from her. She then dated Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in 2007. However, they decided to remain just friends in 2008.