Ellen degeneres why is she famous

Religious groups called for a boycott of the show's parent company, Disney. Before long, "Ellen" was cancelled. Network executives were wary of airing too many episodes with a "gay theme. Source: OWN. Source: The Hollywood Reporter ; ellentv. Source: CNN. Source: People.

Source: TIME. Even President Obama got a little choked up as he told the gathered crowd about DeGeneres's accomplishments. To risk your career like that. Inspires us to be better, one joke and one dance at a time. Here's video of the emotional moment. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation.

Caroline Praderio. Ellen DeGeneres was born in and grew up in Louisiana. She left University of New Orleans after one semester and worked odd jobs. She spent time as a house painter, vacuum salesperson, waitress, and even an oyster shucker. But in the '80s, she started doing stand up at comedy clubs. By , she was touring the country and even won Showtime's Funniest Person in America contest.

At the age of twenty-three, she started to flesh out a comedy routine, first performing just for friends and then at local coffeehouses and comedy clubs. Soon she became the master of ceremonies, or emcee, at a New Orleans comedy club. In she entered a national talent contest held by the cable network Showtime, sending in a videotape of her stand-up act. When DeGeneres won the contest, earning the title of "Funniest Person in America," she went immediately from local New Orleans comic to nationally recognized up-and-coming comedian.

Over the next several years, she traveled around the country performing stand-up comedy, and she appeared on several HBO specials. Most comedians who appeared on the Tonight Show performed their stand-up routine and then returned backstage, never being invited to sit on the couch and have an on-camera chat with Carson. The invitation to sit down with Carson paid tribute to a comedian's talent and stature. A female comedian had never been asked to sit on the couch after a first-time performance on the show.

She had arrived. About the same time, she branched out to begin acting in television series. She appeared in a couple of short-lived sitcoms, Open House and Laurie Hill, before earning her own show. It focused on the lives of Ellen and her friends, finding humor in the mundane, everyday events of the characters' lives.

By the beginning of the second season, the show had undergone major changes, including its title, which became Ellen. The reviews and the ratings steadily improved, as more and more viewers connected with DeGeneres's oddball humor and appealing, average-gal persona. DeGeneres earned numerous nominations for Emmy Awards, and in she won the prestigious Peabody Award for her work on the show.

In the spring of , DeGeneres made pop-culture history by having her character come out as a lesbian, becoming the first gay lead character on a network television sitcom. At the same time, DeGeneres herself came out to millions with a cover story in Time magazine announcing that she is gay. The announcement came as no surprise—fans and journalists had speculated that it was coming—but it still generated a media storm.

Many fans wrote supportive letters, while others were scandalized by the news. During the —98 season, Ellen began losing viewers. Many observers suggested that the show had fundamentally changed when the main character's sexual orientation became the focus of numerous episodes.

Some believed that the network simply did not want the controversy generated by the announcement about Ellen's sexuality. Some major advertisers had pulled out, and the network, fearful of offending viewers, began attaching warning labels to episodes that showed Ellen kissing another woman or discussing her sexual orientation. The show was cancelled after the —98 season. After her show's cancellation, DeGeneres went through a difficult period, both professionally and personally. Her highly publicized relationship and August of breakup with actress Anne Heche — eroded much of the goodwill fans felt toward her—or at least that is what DeGeneres believed, as she explained in an article in People magazine: "I went through a phase, whether it was true or not, where my perception was, 'Everyone hates me now,' and it felt horrible.

In DeGeneres starred in a short-lived sitcom called The Ellen Show, which was praised by reviewers but never attracted a large audience. Amid these disappointments, DeGeneres's professional life hit one distinctly positive note, setting the stage for what some have described as her career's second act.

Over the next year or so, DeGeneres began showing up on television more and more often. She hosted Saturday Night Live, appeared on an episode of Will and Grace, and occupied the center square on the primetime game show Hollywood Squares.

Suddenly, in , DeGeneres was everywhere. She published a best-selling book of comic essays called The Funny Thing Is The character of the blue tang fish Dory seemed tailor-made for DeGeneres's wide-eyed, naive, and intensely likable persona, and in fact the role was written expressly for her. In a September of article in Entertainment Weekly, Andrew Stanton, the film's director and cowriter, explained why DeGeneres was his only choice for that character: "Everybody has that friend who's funny merely for existing.

The funnywoman got her big break in when she performed a stand-up routine on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. More appearances on late-night TV followed, along with club bookings and eventually theater appearances and small TV roles. DeGeneres landed her first regular small-screen gig as a cast member on the Fox sitcom Open House , which aired from to I wanted a show that everybody talks about the next day.

And talk they did.