Adam Carolla

Adam Carolla was born on May 27, 1964, to Jim and Kris (née McCall) Carolla. Some sources list his birthplace as Los Angeles County, California, while others list it as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley, and his parents separated when he was young. Carolla was not given a middle name by his parents; on his driver's license application he listed his middle name as "Lakers" as a joke. The application was processed without notice. His maternal step-grandfather was screenwriter László Görög.

During his youth, Carolla played Pop Warner football for seven years; he later suggested that being involved in sports saved him from a chaotic home life. During his senior year at North Hollywood High School, Carolla distinguished himself in football. In December 1981, he was named to the First Team Offensive Line, Central Valley League, one of 8 leagues at the time in the LA City Section of the California Interscholastic Federation.

In 1994, Carolla volunteered his services as a boxing trainer to prepare Jimmy Kimmel for a bout being staged by KROQ-FM's morning radio program Kevin and Bean. Kimmel was a regular on the show as "Jimmy the Sports Guy" and he was set to fight another KROQ personality in a boxing exhibition which was being billed as the "Bleeda in Reseda". Carolla parlayed this opportunity into a long-running friendship and business partnership with Kimmel as well as a recurring role on Kevin and Bean as cranky woodshop teacher, Mr. Birchum.

In October 1995, after being signed to the William Morris Agency by Mark Itkin, Carolla was offered the job of co-hosting the evening radio call-in show Loveline. His co-hosts were the physician Drew Pinsky ("Dr. Drew") and metal DJ Riki Rachtman. Carolla received the offer after Pinsky heard him on Kevin and Bean (Rachtman left the show the following year.) Loveline is broadcast on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles and is syndicated nationwide on the Westwood One radio network.

Carolla and Drew Pinsky co-wrote (with Marshall Fine) the self-help book The Dr. Drew and Adam Book: A Survival Guide to Life and Love, published in 1998. The book is a compilation of some of the advice the pair compiled while producing Loveline.

Carolla and Pinsky received a Sexual Health in Entertainment (SHINE) Award from The Media Project in 2000 for "incorporating accurate and honest portrayals of sexuality" in the talk show category for Loveline.

While the unique format of the program was primarily a call-in show where listeners would ask questions about sex and relationships, Carolla would often spend much of the show ranting about various topics, from fart jokes to extended parodies of radio morning shows, including mocking the format's penchant for useless and repetitive weather and traffic reports. In contrast to the reserved, thoughtful Pinsky, Carolla served as the loud, funny side of the show. Carolla's character was described by one reviewer as "a toned-down version of Howard Stern minus the huge ego". On September 25, 2001, Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel both had filled in for Howard Stern's head writer Jackie Martling after Martling's departure from the show in March 2001. Carolla had mentioned in various interviews and on his podcast that he was offered the job to replace Jackie Martling, but turned it down primarily due to Stern's show being located in New York as well as his commitment to Loveline.

Carolla and partner Daniel Kellison are the heads of Jackhole Productions. The two created the television show Crank Yankers for Comedy Central, which revived the Mr. Birchum character. (The show premiered in 2002 on Comedy Central and returned to MTV2 on February 9, 2007, running again until March 30, 2007. The show screened in Australia on SBS Television and The Comedy Channel between 2003 and 2008. The show revived in 2019.)

On September 28, 2002, Carolla married Lynette Paradise. The couple's twins Natalia and Santino "Sonny" Richard Carolla were born June 7, 2006.

In 2003, he appeared in Windy City Heat as himself. In 2006, Carolla finished work on The Hammer, a semi-autobiographical independent film he co-wrote and co-produced, in which he stars opposite Heather Juergensen. The film is based loosely on his own life and is filmed at a gym he helped build with his co-star, Ozzie, played by Oswaldo Castillo, his friend in real life whom he met while building the gym when they both worked in construction. The film made its world premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City and shortly thereafter received a positive review in Variety. The film was released on March 21, 2008. The film is rated 80% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In October 2005, Carolla was announced as the host of a new morning radio show on the Infinity Broadcasting network. His new show would replace the popular syndicated Howard Stern Show (which was moving to satellite radio) in twelve of the 27 markets in which Stern had been broadcast including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, and Portland, Oregon. The Adam Carolla Show debuted in January 2006.

From August 2005 to November 2005, Carolla hosted the talk show Too Late with Adam Carolla on Comedy Central.

Also in 2005, Carolla was featured in a home remodeling program called The Adam Carolla Project wherein he and a crew of old friends renovated his childhood home. The 13 episodes aired on the cable channel TLC (The Learning Channel) from October through December 2005. The house was then sold for 1.2 million dollars.

In 2006, Carolla appeared on the special summer series Gameshow Marathon as a celebrity panelist on the Match Game episode.

In early 2008, actor Gerard Butler sat in and observed Adam Carolla on The Adam Carolla Show in order to prepare for his role in The Ugly Truth as a cynical and crass talk-radio host allegedly based on Carolla.

On June 16, 2008 Carolla was selected to host a pilot of an American version of the popular BBC show Top Gear for NBC. In December 2008, NBC decided not to pick up the show.

On the February 13, 2010 episode of Carolla's CarCast podcast, he broke the news that The History Channel had picked up Top Gear US, which NBC had decided against in 2008. On the March 26, 2010, episode of CarCast, Carolla said that he would not be co-hosting Top Gear US because of scheduling conflicts with his NBC sitcom project. In June 2010, Carolla said that his NBC pilot had not been picked up and was now "dead".

Carolla has also done voice acting on cartoons, including Commander Nebula on the Disney animated series Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Death on Family Guy (replacing Norm Macdonald) and Spanky Ham on Drawn Together. He was also the voice of the éclair police officer, Wynchell, in the Disney film Wreck-It Ralph. In 2008 and 2009, he was the spokesperson for T.G.I. Friday's.

On February 18, 2009, The Adam Carolla Show was canceled as part of a format switch at KLSX to AMP FM, a new top 40 station. The final show was Friday, February 20, 2009.

Carolla started a daily podcast on February 23, 2009, at his personal website, which would evolve into the ACE Broadcasting Network. The first Adam Carolla podcast was downloaded more than 250,000 times in the initial 24 hours, and by the third podcast, it was the number one podcast on iTunes in both the U.S. and Canada. During the debut week, the Adam Carolla podcast recorded 1.6 million downloads. In the second week it recorded 2.4 million downloads. By the fourth episode of the second week, featuring former Adam Carolla Show sidekick Dave Dameshek, the show was downloaded more than 500,000 times. Adam stated that bandwidth cost more than $9,000 a month as of May 2009.

On February 21, 2009, a day after his Los Angeles-based morning radio show was canceled – as part of a format change at KLSX-FM – CBS ordered a comedy pilot starring the actor/comedian. Ace in the Hole was to star Carolla as a husband and father who works as a driving instructor. Carolla created and wrote the pilot with Kevin Hench ("Jimmy Kimmel Live!"). Carolla stated that Pamela Adlon was to play his wife and Windell Middlebrooks of the Miller High Life commercial fame will play his best friend. During his March 30, 2009, podcast, Carolla briefly described the show as being "All in the Family, essentially", with Carolla playing a similar role to that of Archie Bunker. On the July 23, 2009, episode of the Adam Carolla Podcast, Carolla announced that CBS was not picking up the pilot for the 2009 season, "in any way, shape or form".

On October 22, 2009, it was reported in Variety that Carolla had struck a deal with NBC to produce a half-hour pilot for a sitcom. The report was later confirmed on January 4, 2010, and was the first comedy pilot ordered by NBC for the season. The untitled project, written by Carolla and Kevin Hench, was a single-camera endeavor that starred Carolla as a contractor and father who attempts to rebuild his life after his wife leaves him. Carolla was set to executive produce the NBC project along with frequent collaborators Kimmel and Hench, as well as his agent James "Babydoll" Dixon, Jon Pollack from 30 Rock, Gail Berman, Daniel Kellison, and Lloyd Braun. Universal Media Studios, BermanBraun, and Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel's own Jackhole Industries.

In 2010, Carolla posed for the NOH8 Campaign. In August 2011, Carolla released a podcast where he mocked a petition to the producers of Sesame Street that demanded Bert and Ernie get married on air. He said on air that gay activists should "[j]ust get married, and please shut up" and that "Y.U.C.K." would be more memorable acronym than LGBT, and referring to transgender people he asked: "When did we start giving a shit about these people?" The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation characterized the previous remarks by Carolla as offensive, including an assertion that "all things being equal", heterosexual parents make better parents than homosexual parents. Carolla responded: "I'm sorry my comments were hurtful. I'm a comedian, not a politician."

In November 2010, Carolla's In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks... And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy was published by Crown Archetype and debuted at number eight on the New York Times' Best Seller list for hardcover non-fiction on November 21, 2010. The book was compiled from rants Carolla had delivered on his radio show and podcast along with some new material and was dictated to and ghost-written by Mike Lynch.

On May 18, 2011, Carolla made the claim on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that The Adam Carolla Show had taken the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded podcast ever from Ricky Gervais after he claims it received 59,574,843 unique downloads from March 2009 to March 16, 2011.

Premiering on February 19, 2012, Carolla was also one of the contestants in the 12th season of NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice. He was fired in Week 4, because Trump perceived that Carolla did not utilize Andretti's car background during a Buick presentation, even though it was clear that Andretti did not like public speaking.

Carolla published a short, illustrated e-book entitled Rich Man, Poor Man in January 2012. The book details some similarities in the experiences of the very rich and the very poor which are not shared by the middle class. The book was illustrated by Michael Narren.

Carolla's book Not Taco Bell Material was published by Crown Archetype on June 12, 2012. It climbed the New York Times bestseller list and received widespread praise for its satirical humor and honest, self-deprecating style.

In June 2012, Carolla was accused of sexism because of statements he gave in an interview, published in the New York Post:

Carolla won the 2013 Pro/Celebrity Race as a professional and the 2012 Pro/Celebrity Race at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach as an amateur. The 2012 race was run on April 14, 2012 and was broadcast on Speed TV. Carolla has previously participated in the race in 2010 and 2003. He finished ninth among 19 racers (fifth among the ten celebrities) in 2010 despite being regarded as a pre-race favorite. He is also a serious automobile collector with over 20 cars. His collection includes several Lamborghinis from the 1960s and early 1970s, including two Miuras (of 764 examples ever produced), one of which he has loaned to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, two 400GT 2+2s (of 247 units produced) and a 1965 350GT (one of 135 built). At least one Ferrari and Aston Martin and several vintage race cars round out the collection.

In 2013, Personal Audio filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Lotzi Digital, Inc., producers of The Adam Carolla Show and several other podcasts on the Carolla Digital Network, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The suit alleged that owner Adam Carolla and his network of content infringed on Personal Audio's patent 8,112,504.

In July 2013, Carolla used crowdfunding for Road Hard; a film he directed and starred in, about the lives of aging road comics. Adam confirmed through a press conference that the film would co-star David Alan Grier, Illeana Douglas, Diane Farr, and Larry Miller. It had limited theatrical release in the United States. Several minutes of the credits are devoted to listing the names of those who helped crowdfund the movie.

Personal Audio dropped the lawsuit July 29, 2014, stating that the defendants were not "making significant money from infringing Personal Audio's patents". However, Carolla countersued, having already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars mounting a defense against claims he deemed unfounded. Among claims sought by the countersuit is a request that the initial patent be invalidated. On August 15, 2014, Carolla and Personal Audio filed a joint motion to dismiss after reaching a settlement, the details of which are confidential, but include a six-week "quiet period" during which neither party could speak to the media. Both parties' claims were dropped without prejudice, and as such could be re-filed at a later date.

The show premiered on March 9, 2014, to 1.2 million viewers, the largest audience for a series debut on Spike since Coal in March 2011. The show was cancelled in 2015.

Premiering on Spike TV on March 14, 2017, Adam Carolla and Friends Build Stuff Live features Carolla building projects live and in studio with some of his Hollywood friends, and tackling viewers' home improvement projects via social media.

In 2017, Carolla and Dennis Prager began filming No Safe Spaces, a documentary about political correctness at universities. No Safe Spaces had a limited opening on October 25, 2019, and did well enough to open nationwide on December 6, 2019.

Corolla's latest book, I'm Your Emotional Support Animal: Navigating Our All Woke, No Joke Culture, was published by Post Hill Press on June 16, 2020.