Judy Gold

Comedian / Actress / Writer / Producer

Judy Gold (born November 15, 1962) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, podcaster, television writer and producer. She won two Daytime Emmy Awards for her work as a writer and producer on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. She has also been involved in many projects in various roles, including the television series All-American Girl and HBO at the Multiplex segments where she asks humorous questions of unexpecting moviegoers.

She was born on November 15, 1962, in Newark, New Jersey. She first did stand-up on a dare when she was a music student at Rutgers University. She is a lesbian who shared a relationship with Sharon Callahan, her former partner, for almost 20 years. She has two children (Henry, 1996, and Ben, 2001), facts she frequently referenced on the show Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. Gold is very active in both LGBT and Jewish communities. She was active in support of the 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential campaign. In an interview with Marc Maron, Gold revealed her comedic influences to be Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, and Totie Fields.

Her one-woman show 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, co-written with Kate Moira Ryan, is based on a series of interviews with more than 50 Jewish mothers in the United States. Their stories are interspersed with anecdotes about her own mother and her life as a lesbian mother of two sons. It ran at the Ars Nova Theater in New York City in early 2006 and reopened on October 12, 2006, at St. Luke's Theater. Judy Gold also appears as a commentator on truTV's TruTV Presents: World's Dumbest. In 2007, she was featured in the film Making Trouble, a tribute to female Jewish comedians, produced by the Jewish Women's Archive. In 2011, Gold was named a Givenik Ambassador. In 2015, she appeared off-Broadway as Eleanor Roosevelt in the satiric musical Clinton: The Musical at New World Stages.