Joy Behar

Josephine Victoria "Joy" Behar (; née Occhiuto) is an American comedian, television host, actress, and writer. She co-hosts the ABC daytime talk show The View, where she is the only original panelist still regularly appearing. She hosted The Joy Behar Show on HLN from 2009 to 2011 and Joy Behar: Say Anything! on Current TV, from 2012 until the channel switched formats in August 2013. Behar's latest weekly late-night talk show, Late Night Joy, aired on TLC in 2015. She also wrote The Great Gasbag: An A–Z Study Guide to Surviving Trump World. Early life Behar was born Josephine Victoria Occhiuto in 1942 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the only child to a Roman Catholic family of Italian descent. Her mother, Rose (née Carbone), was a seamstress, and her father, Gino Occhiuto, was a truck driver for Coca-Cola. Behar earned a BA in sociology from Queens College in 1964 and an MA in English education from Stony Brook University in 1966. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, she taught English on Long Island at Lindenhurst Senior High School in Lindenhurst, New York. She studied acting at the HB Studio. Career Career beginnings Behar started her career in show business in the early 1980s as a receptionist and later a producer on Good Morning America.