Amy Schumer

Amy Beth Schumer was born on June 1, 1981, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, to Sandra Jane Schumer and Gordon David Schumer, who owned a baby furniture company. Her father was born into a Jewish family with roots in Ukraine, and her mother, who has Protestant and Puritan ancestry tracing back to the colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony, converted to Judaism before their marriage. Schumer was raised Jewish and attended the Hebrew school of the Central Synagogue of Nassau County, a Reform synagogue in Rockville Centre, where her mother served on the school board. She is a second cousin, once removed, of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Her family experienced financial prosperity during her early childhood through her father's Manhattan furniture business, but when she was nine years old the business failed and her father went bankrupt. He was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and her parents divorced when she was twelve.

Following her parents' divorce, Schumer relocated to Long Island with her mother and attended South Side High School in Rockville Centre, where she graduated in 1999 and was voted both Class Clown and Teacher's Worst Nightmare by her classmates. She went on to attend Towson University in Towson, Maryland, earning a degree in theater in 2003. After returning to New York City, she studied at the William Esper Studio for two years while working as a bartender and waitress. She also lived in Santa Barbara, California, for a period, where she worked as a pedicab driver. She has a younger sister, Kim Caramele, who works as a comedy writer and producer, and a half-brother, Jason Stein, a musician based in Chicago, Illinois.

Schumer began her stand-up career on June 1, 2004, performing for the first time at Gotham Comedy Club. In 2007, she recorded a Live at Gotham episode for Comedy Central and advanced to the finals of the fifth season of NBC's reality competition Last Comic Standing, placing fourth. That same year she became a recurring guest on the Fox News late-night program Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, a role she continued through 2012. Her first Comedy Central Presents special aired on April 2, 2010, and she released a stand-up album, Cutting, in 2011. Her stand-up special Mostly Sex Stuff premiered on Comedy Central on August 18, 2012. During this period she also appeared in supporting roles on 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Girls, and the Adult Swim series Delocated, and acted in the films Price Check, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Sleepwalk with Me, all in 2012.

From 2013 to 2016, Schumer served as creator, co-producer, co-writer, and star of the Comedy Central sketch comedy series Inside Amy Schumer. The show earned her a Peabody Award and five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including a win for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series in 2015. In 2015, she wrote and starred in the film Trainwreck alongside Bill Hader, which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. She subsequently starred in the comedy films Snatched in 2017 and I Feel Pretty in 2019. Schumer has also received two Grammy Award nominations: one for Best Comedy Album for Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo, and one for Best Spoken Word Album for narrating her memoir The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, published in 2016.

Schumer made her Broadway debut in 2017 in Meteor Shower, written by Steve Martin. Her performance earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play in 2018. Beyond her stage work, she created, produced, and starred in the HBO documentary series Expecting Amy in 2020 and the Hulu comedy-drama series Life & Beth, which ran from 2022 to 2024. In 2017, Schumer appeared as a guest on the PBS genealogy series Finding Your Roots, through which she learned that in 1704, three children from her ancestor Thomas Tarbell's family were captured during a French-Abenaki raid on Groton, Massachusetts, and taken to Montreal. One girl was ransomed by a French-Canadian family and eventually joined a French Catholic convent, while the two boys were adopted by Mohawk families at Kahnawake, married Mohawk women, and have descendants who became chiefs. Individuals with the surname Tarbell remain part of the Mohawk communities at Kahnawake and Akwesasne.