In 1998, McCarthy's first major movie role was alongside Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the comedy BASEketball. McCarthy also released an autobiography: Jen-X: Jenny McCarthy's Open Book. Also in 1997, she appeared on one of two covers for the September issue of Playboy (the other cover featured Pamela Anderson). 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. In 1996, she landed a small part in the comedy The Stupids. McCarthy returned to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly the WWF) on the AugSaturday Night's Main Event XXXVI to thank the fans for supporting Generation Rescue, an autism advocacy organization. She left after the match with the victor, Diesel. That same year she also appeared at World Wrestling Federation (WWF) pay-per-view event WrestleMania XI as a guest valet for villain Shawn Michaels, who faced heroic WWF Champion, Diesel. Her job as a co-host was a success, and Playboy wanted her to do more modeling. In 1995, when MTV chose McCarthy to co-host a new dating show called Singled Out, she left Hot Rocks.
In 1994, because of her newfound public attention, McCarthy moved to Los Angeles and, for a time, hosted Hot Rocks, a Playboy TV show featuring uncensored music videos. McCarthy was later made the Playmate of the Year, and was paid a $100,000 salary. According to McCarthy, the pictorial caused an uproar in her Catholic neighborhood, and resulted in her house being pelted with eggs, her sisters being taunted at school, and McCarthy, who counted Catholic nuns among her aunts, being lectured about her future damnation by those close to her. Her layout emphasized her Catholic upbringing with a schoolgirl theme. Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner cites McCarthy's "wholesome Catholic girl" persona as the unique quality for which she was selected out of 10,000 applicants. McCarthy became the Playmate of the Month for October 1993. In 1993, Playboy magazine offered McCarthy $20,000 to pose for its October issue.
Career Modeling, acting and broadcasting Jenny McCarthy She spent two years at Southern Illinois University. Laurence High School, although she has referred to herself as an "outcast" at her school and has stated she was repeatedly bullied by classmates. Īs a teenager McCarthy attended Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School, whose school sweater she donned in the pages of Playboy, and was a cheerleader at both Brother Rice High School and St. McCarthy's mother, Linda, was a housewife and courtroom custodian, and her father, Dan McCarthy, was a steel mill foreman. She is the second of four daughters – her sisters are named Lynette, Joanne, and Amy actress Melissa McCarthy is her cousin. She lived in the West Elsdon neighborhood of Chicago. She was born to a working-class Catholic family, and has German, Irish, and Polish ancestry. McCarthy was born on November 1, 1972, at Little Company of Mary Hospital located in the southwest Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park, Illinois.