World Stars Celebrites: leeza gibbons career

Leeza Kim Gibbons born 26 March 1957 is an American talk show host. Gibbons is the host of her own radio show, Hollywood Confidential, part of the United Stations radio syndication company.
Contents
* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Early life
o 1.2 Career
* 2 References
* 3 External links
Biography
Early life
Gibbons was born in Hartsville, South Carolina, the daughter of Jean and Carlos Gibbons, a former state superintendent of education and antique shop owner.Gibbons has two siblings; a brother, Carlos Jr., and a sister, Camy. The Gibbons family also adopted and raised a baby chimpanzee named Martha that was later brought to Africa and released at a wildlife preserve. Gibbons grew up in Irmo, South Carolina, a suburb of Columbia, and graduated from Irmo High School. After completing high school, Gibbons attended the University of South Carolina's school of journalism and mass communication, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority.
Career
Her past television credits include co-hosting local segments of PM Magazine in Beaumont, TX before moving to WFAA-TV Channel 8 in Dallas-Fort Worth during the early 1980s, hosting Entertainment Tonight and Extra, as well as hosting Leeza, her own NBC/syndicated talk show, which ran from January 1994 to September 2000. In the 1990s, she was the co-host of John and Leeza, a talk show with former co-host of Entertainment Tonight, John Tesh. After one season, Tesh was dropped from the show, and Gibbons hosted solo for the remainder of the series. She has also guest starred on several shows, including The Geena Davis Show, The Simple Life, The Simpsons, Home Improvement, and Just Shoot Me. She played a television reporter in the RoboCop films and had a small role as a reporter in Soapdish. She also hosted a series that explores true stories of survival in Lifetime's What Should You Do?
In 1988, she was also the host of the Telethon show on New Zealand's TVNZ network, which she hosted alongside Christopher Quinten, whom she later married (see below). In addition to her television and radio career, Gibbons has received the Congressional Horizon Award for her work on children's issues.
In the 1990s, Gibbons hosted the radio countdown show Blockbuster Top 25 Countdown with Leeza Gibbons. The show was created for Adult Contemporary and Hot Adult Contemporary formats. Gibbons counted down the hits in the respective formats and included entertainment news and pre-recorded interviews. When Blockbuster Video stopped sponsoring the program in 1999, the show's name was changed to Leeza Gibbons' Top 25 Countdown. The Adult Contemporary version was cut to a top 20. In January 2001, the countdown aspect of the show was dropped and was renamed Leeza Gibbons' Hollywood Confidential, which focused more on entertainment news.
In early 2000s, Gibbons launched her mineral makeup line Sheer Cover with Guthy-Renker. Gibbons says, "Sheer Cover is a not just a makeup product, it's a transformative experience for women who have serious skin issues like sun damage, birth marks, scars and acne or just for any woman who wants natural looking skin that glows with a healthy radiance.
On February 20, 2007, the ABC television network announced that Gibbons would be a participant in its Spring 2007 Dancing with the Stars reality show. She was eliminated from the competition on April 10, 2007. She was the third celebrity eliminated.
On November 14, 2007, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the appointment of Gibbons to the board that oversees California's stem cell research agency. Gibbons fills a slot designated for a patient advocate for Alzheimers as the result of her nonprofit group, Leeza's Place, which is aimed at caregivers for persons with memory disorders. Gibbons' efforts with memory disorders grew out of her own family's experience with her mother who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and died in May 2008.
Gibbons replaced Meredith Vieira for a week of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire shows on June 23–27, 2008.
In May 2009, Gibbons' new book "Take Your Oxygen First: Protecting Your Health and Happiness While Caring for a Love One with Memory Loss" tells the story of Leeza's family's personal struggle with Alzheimer's disease after her mother's diagnosis and provides practical advice on how caregivers and their families can and must take care of their own physical, emotional and spiritual needs in order to give better care to their loved ones suffering with a memory loss disorder. The book was co-written by Leeza's Place Executive Director of the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation, Dr. Jamie Huysman and Dr. Rosemary Laird of the Health First Aging Institute in Florida.

leeza gibbons