Leeza Gibbons

Leeza Kim Gibbons 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.

Gibbons was born in Hartsville, South Carolina, and grew up in Irmo, South Carolina, a suburb of Columbia. She graduated from Irmo High School. She is daughter of Jean and Carlos Gibbons, who was a former state superintendent of education as well as antique shop owner. She has a brother, Carlos, Jr., and a sister, Cammy. Gibbons graduated from the University of South Carolina’s school of journalism and mass communication. She is a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority.

Her past television credits include co-hosting local segments of PM Magazine for 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. In addition to her television and radio career, Gibbons has received the Congressional Horizon Award for her work on children’s issues.