Amy Schumer

Amy Schumer (born June 1, 1981, New York, New York, U.S.) American comedian and actress whose pointed self-deprecating humour brought her success on stage and screen. Perhaps the most frequent topics of her often raunchy comedy were relationship issues, body image, and the challenges faced by professional women in the 21st century.

Schumer was born on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but her family moved to Long Island, New York, after her father developed multiple sclerosis and his business folded. She responded to adversity with humour, and she honed her performance skills, earning a theatre degree (2003) from Towson University. She became a regular on the stand-up circuit before her breakthrough in 2007 on the NBC TV reality show Last Comic Standing. Although she finished fourth, the exposure elevated her profile, and in 2010 she headlined a TV episode of Comedy Central Presents. Schumer released Cutting, her debut stand-up album, in 2011, and the following year she appeared in Amy Schumer: Mostly Sex Stuff on Comedy Central. With the success of that stand-up special, Comedy Central green-lighted Inside Amy Schumer, which premiered in 2013. The show made Schumer a household name, and in 2014 the program received a Peabody Award for showcasing Schumer’s “important brand of culturally aware humor.” She won a prime-time Emmy Award for Inside Amy Schumer in 2015.

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Schumer made her motion-picture breakthrough in Trainwreck (2015), a semiautobiographical comedy written by Schumer that was directed by Judd Apatow. Although the movie was a hit with audiences and critics, its box-office performance was overshadowed by a mass shooting at a showing of Trainwreck at a theatre in Louisiana; two people were killed, and nine were wounded. Afterward, Schumer teamed with her cousin, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, to promote gun-control legislation. That effort continued in the wake of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that claimed 49 lives on June 12, 2016. Schumer released a sketch that drew attention to the inability of victims of gun violence to seek legal recourse against gun dealers or manufacturers.

Although Schumer often talked about her weight in hilariously self-deprecating terms, she triggered a controversy in April 2016 when she spoke out against Glamour magazine’s inclusion of her in an issue specifically celebrating plus-size women. In a statement that recalled comic Jerry Seinfeld’s “not that there’s anything wrong with that!” caveat, Schumer denied that she was plus-size but said that there should not be any shame associated with that label. The debate led many to question whether such categories were actually useful when trying to encourage body positivity. On June 23, 2016, Schumer headlined at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, becoming the first female stand-up comic to sell out that storied venue, which had a capacity of 18,200. The following day she announced the beginning of a world tour that included stops in Europe, North America, and Australia.

In 2017 Schumer teamed with Goldie Hawn for the mother-daughter comedy Snatched before tackling a dramatic role in Thank You for Your Service (2017), an examination of an Iraq War veteran’s struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She returned to comedy in I Feel Pretty (2018), playing an insecure woman who wakes up from a fall with unshakeable, if not delusional, self-confidence. In 2021 Schumer appeared in The Humans, an adaptation of a play set during a family’s Thanksgiving dinner. She later cocreated, cowrote, and starred in Life & Beth (2022– ), a semi-autobiographical show about a woman taking stock of her life.

During this time Schumer continued to perform her stand-up routine, and several of her performances were taped for television. Notably, Amy Schumer: The Leather Special and Amy Schumer Growing premiered on Netflix in 2017 and 2019, respectively. In 2020, while sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, the comedian and her husband, Chris Fischer, a chef, starred in the TV series Amy Schumer Learns to Cook. That year also saw the airing of the TV documentary series Expecting Amy, a candid look at her pregnancy; she had a son in 2019. In 2022 Schumer cohosted the Academy Awards ceremony.

Schumer’s memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo (a play on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the title of a novel by Stieg Larsson), was released in 2016.