Career

Career

Modeling and acting career
After getting accepted by Playboy in 1993, the magazine wanted her to pose for the October issue. McCarthy was paid $20,000 for the photo shoot. McCarthy became the Playmate of the Month and later the Playmate of the Year. In 1994, thanks to this newfound attention and popularity, McCarthy moved to Los Angeles and, for a time, hosted Hot Rocks, a Playboy TV show featuring uncensored music videos.

In 1995, MTV chose McCarthy to be the host of a new dating show called Singled Out, for which she left Hot Rocks. Her job as a host was a success, and Playboy wanted her to do more modeling. That same year, she also appeared at WrestleMania XI as a guest valet for Shawn Michaels. She left after the match with the victor, WWF Heavyweight Champion Diesel. She returned to the WWE on the August 2, 2008 edition of Saturday Night's Main Event to thank the fans for supporting Generation Rescue. In 1996, McCarthy landed a small part in the comedy The Stupids. In 1997, McCarthy launched two shows. The first one was an MTV sketch comedy show The Jenny McCarthy Show, which was sufficiently popular for NBC to sign her for an eponymous sitcom later that year, Jenny. The latter show is generally considered a disappointment and was quickly canceled. Also in 1997, she appeared on one of two covers for the September issue of Playboy (the other cover featured Pamela Anderson). McCarthy also released an autobiography: Jen-X.

In 1998, McCarthy starred in BASEketball. In 1999, she starred in Diamonds, a movie which was directed by her husband John Mallory Asher. The next year, she appeared in the horror movie Scream 3. Since 2001, McCarthy has guest starred in such shows as Stacked, Charmed, The Drew Carey Show, Wings, Fastlane, and the aptly-named Just Shoot Me!.

In 2003, McCarthy appeared in Scary Movie 3 along with model and actress Pamela Anderson. In 2005, McCarthy produced, wrote, and starred in Dirty Love along with Carmen Electra. The same year, McCarthy hosted a new show on E! called Party at the Palms. The reality show, which is filmed at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, features hotel guests, party goers, and celebrities. In March 2006, she was given Razzie Awards for "Worst Actress", "Worst Screenplay", and "Worst Picture" for her work on Dirty Love, which also netted her then-husband, John Asher, a Razzie for "Worst Director."

McCarthy has continued her work with Playboy over the years, both as a model and in other capacities. She appeared on the cover of the magazine's January 2005 issue wearing a leopard skin bunny suit and was featured in a pictorial shot at Elvis Presley's Graceland mansion in the same issue. She was the second woman (Carmen Electra was the first) and first Playmate to become a celebrity photographer for the Playboy Cyber Club, getting behind the camera to photograph model Jennifer Madden, who is not a Playmate.

Jenny's younger sister, Amy, has also posed for Playboy. She was a Cyber Girl of the Week and the Cyber Girl of the Month for January 2005.[7]

She is the current voice of Six in the third season of Canadian CGI Sci-Fi cartoon Tripping the Rift.

McCarthy currently stars in an online five episode series, called In The Motherhood, along with Chelsea Handler and Leah Remini.[8] The show is on MSN and is based on being a mother where users could submit their stories to have it made into real webisodes.

She also plays the role of Agent Tanya in the video game Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3.


[edit] Public persona

April 4, 2005Though McCarthy initially rose to fame because of her sexual image, a frequent source of her celebrity derives from toilet humor. McCarthy once modeled for Candie's, a shoe company. In one magazine ad, McCarthy posed on a toilet seat, with her underwear near her ankles. Cultural scholar Collin Gifford Brooke wrote that the ad's "taboo nature" brought it attention, while noting that the ad itself helped to weaken that taboo.[9] Another Candie's ad depicted McCarthy passing gas in a crowded elevator.

A sketch on her MTV show centered on her character, a well-coifed business woman, answering the question of "What did you have for lunch?" by seeming to force herself to vomit all over a table which she then ate on-screen. This was faked using special effects. The direct contrast of McCarthy's reputation as a sex symbol and this often grotesque humor is closely associated with her image. This image was taken to a new extreme in her film Dirty Love, which featured McCarthy's character sitting in a massive pool of her own menstrual blood.[10