Our Friends
Dumb.com » » Celebrity Biographies » » Debbie Matenopoulos

  Debbie Matenopoulos Biography

This section contains Debbie Matenopoulos Biography




Debbie Matenopoulos is an American television personality born on December 13, 1974 in Richmond, Virginia. Her real name was Thespina, but was later on Americanized to Debbie. She is of Greek parentage and is fluent in Greek. She first attended the Virginia Commonwealth University but eventually transferred and graduated with a degree in Journalism at the New York University. While a student at NYU Debbie Matenopoulos worked as an intern at MTV, and because of her good talent, she was quickly to story coordinator for UnFiltered and took part in the preparations for the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.

After impressing Barbara Walters in a chance meeting, Debbie Matenopoulos was then cast as a co-host on Walters’s new talk show, The View, alongside Meredith Vieira, Joy Behar and Star Jones. While on The View, Debbie Matenopoulos became one of the favorite targets for Saturday Night Live parodies. In 1999 however, she was fired from the talk show due to unstated reasons and was replaced by Lisa Ling. Debbie Matenopoulos then joined the TV Guide Channel and hosted the sports program The Moves, the movie program The Screening Room, and the Entertainment News. She was also a co-host in the hit daytime TV program Good Day Live.

In 2000, Debbie Matenopoulos ventured into film and appeared on the movie Endsville. She also starred MTVs hit claymation show Celebrity Deathmatch as herself. In 2003, she hosted an Emmy special and became a presenter at the First Annual TV Guide Awards. In September 2004, Debbie Matenpoulos suffered an accident and was hospitalized after attempting to do a stunt for Good Day Live. The said segment focused on firefighter training in which she practiced a fall from a three-story building. She landed incorrectly and was immediately rushed to the hospital due to a closed head wound. In the same year, she became a celebrity judge in the TBS Superstation show He’s a Lady. Her morning show Good Day Live continued to be a success however; it was canceled by its producers in 2005.

Debbie Matenopoulos was seen on E!’s coverage of the Golden Globe Awards in 2006. Afterwards, she became part of The Daily 10, E!’s weeknight celebrity gossip series. She has as well been part of VH1 specials such as I Love the 90s and I Love Toys.

In July 2003, Debbie Matenopoulos married the founder of Mammoth Records and president of Music at Lion’s Gate Entertainment, Jay Faires.