Debbie Matenopoulos
| Debbie Matenopoulos | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 13, 1974 Richmond, Virginia, U.S. |
| Occupation | Television host, television personality, actress |
| Years active | 1997–present |
| Spouse(s) |
|
Debbie Matenopoulos (born December 13, 1974) is an American television host.
Matenopoulos was born in Richmond, Virginia, of Greek ancestry. She is the daughter of Efrosini, a hair stylist, and Nicolaos T. Matenopoulos, a furniture maker. Her birth name is Despina Matenopoulos, named after her grandmother. Despina was later anglicized to Debbie.
Matenopoulos went to John Randolph Tucker High School, and then attended Virginia Commonwealth University for one year before transferring to the Journalism Department at New York University. She was a member of the women's fraternity Alpha Omicron Pi. While at NYU she also worked at MTV as an intern. She quickly moved up the ranks, soon becoming story coordinator for UnFiltered.
In 1997, after a chance meeting with Barbara Walters, Matenopoulos became a co-host on Walters's new talk show, The View. She was parodied on Saturday Night Live as being an uninformed ditz and eventually invited on SNL as a guest. In 1999, she was abruptly fired from the show and replaced by Lisa Ling. Later that same year, she joined the TV Guide Channel.
Matenopoulos has played Lisa Swayzak in the 2000 film Endsville, and starred in the claymation show Celebrity Deathmatch as herself.
In January 2004, Good Day Live brought in Matenopoulous (along with Arthel Neville) to co-host the nationally syndicated program. On September 29, 2004, she was hospitalized for an injury that was the result of a stunt she attempted for a segment of Good Day Live. The segment was focused on firefighter training, in which she practiced a fall from a three-story building at a Los Angeles fire station. She landed incorrectly on an airbag and was rushed to the hospital for a possible head injury. It was a closed head wound and she was temporarily blind. Despite massive promotion, including a mall-tour featuring Matenopoulous and Arthel Neville, Good Day Live was canceled by its syndicators in March 2005.
...
Wikipedia