Ellen DeGeneres: Snapshot
- Name
- Ellen DeGeneres
- Birth Date
- 01/26/1958
- Birth Place
- Metairie, La.
The resulting controversy put pressure on her relationship with actress Anne Heche, contributed to the cancellation of her popular sitcom, Ellen, and left her mired in depression for three years. She rebounded as the daffy voice of Dory in Disney's Finding Nemo and topped the ratings with her Emmy-winning talk show before scoring mixed reviews as host of the 2007 Oscars.
In her personal life, DeGeneres calls her girlfriend Australian actress Portia de Rossi a "perfect fit," giving DeGeneres plenty of reasons to do one of her famous dance moves.
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Ellen DeGeneres: Five Fun Facts
- Ellen DeGeneres turned down a role in Friends before signing up for a show called These Friends of Mine – which would eventually become Ellen.
- Before she got her start in comedy, Ellen DeGeneres worked as a vacuum cleaner saleswoman, TGIFriday's waitress and an oyster shucker in New Orleans.
- There is an ecology-themed ride named for Ellen DeGeneres at Walt Disney World's Epcot park – Ellen's Energy World.
- Oprah Winfrey played Ellen DeGeneres' therapist on the April 30, 1997 coming out episode of Ellen. DeGeneres' friends Laura Dern, Demi Moore, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang and Billy Bob Thornton also made cameos.
- As a teenager, Ellen DeGeneres used to love Hot Sox – tall, glittery socks popular in the early '70s. But after moving to a small town in Texas, she decided to give them away: "I'm going to a place where they have gun racks on the back of the pickup trucks...I just have to get rid of anything weird," she told The New York Times in 2001.
Ellen DeGeneres: Biography 
- 1973
Teenage Trauma
DeGeneres and her mother leave New Orleans for the small town of Atlanta, Texas. Her older brother Vance, 18, stays in New Orleans with their father, Elliott, an insurance salesman. In Texas, a 16-year-old DeGeneres is secretly molested by her new stepfather as her mother struggles with breast cancer. Raised as a devout Christian Scientist, she is naïve about her body, telling PEOPLE, "I didn't know. I wasn't educated." After she graduates from high school and moves back to New Orleans, she finally tells her mother the truth.
- 1980
Comedic Tribute
DeGeneres, 21, develops a relationship with Kathy Perkoff, 23, a poet. "They were two very creative people, crazy and young and very much in love," Perkoff's sister Rachel remembers. The pair's happiness is abruptly cut short when Perkoff dies in a car accident. Afterwards, DeGeneres writes her first monologue, "A Phone Call to God," about mortality, and performs it at her first stand-up job, emceeing at a New Orleans comedy club. Her taped performances there win her the 1982 Showtime's Funniest Person in America award.
- 1986
Heeeeeere's Johnny!
DeGeneres becomes the first female comedian Johnny Carson invites for a chat on the couch on The Tonight Show. "I'm sitting on this mattress infested with fleas [in 1980], and I thought, 'I'm going to do this on Johnny Carson, and I'm going to get called over to the couch, and I'll be the first woman in history ever to get called over,'" she says on Today. "I had created that experience because I wanted it."
Photo Credits
Top Left: Michele Laurita/CORBIS OUTLINE
BIOGRAPHY (top to bottom): SETH POPPELL/CLASSMATES YEARBOOK ARCHIVES; Photofest
