Steve Harvey is one of the most successful hosts in recent TV history, but he’s dealt with plenty of ups and downs over the years.
The West Virginia native began his comedy career in the early 1990s, working as a stand-up and hosting Showtime at the Apollo from 1993 until 2000. In 1997, he hit the road with fellow comedians Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley and Bernie Mac for the mega-successful Kings of Comedy tour, which became a movie in 2000.
The Daytime Emmy winner kept expanding his career into film, TV and radio throughout the early aughts, starting his syndicated radio program The Steve Harvey Morning Show in 2000 and making his narrative film debut in 2003’s The Fighting Temptations.
Eventually, the comedian had to give up his stand-up career because he was so busy juggling his radio show, his sitcom and more. In 2022, however, he claimed that he stopped performing stand-up because of he worried about “cancel culture” affecting his other work.
“The only way I can do one more special is that it would have to be at the end of my television career, because it will end my television career,” he said during the Television Critics Association press tour in January 2022. “We’re in the cancel culture, and nobody — no stand-up alive that is sponsor-driven — can say anything he wants to.”
Despite putting his stand-up career on hold, Harvey has kept his plate full since the beginning of the 21st century. In 2010, he became the new host of the long-running game show Family Feud, and five years later, he signed on to helm a reboot of the spinoff Celebrity Family Feud.
The Johnson Family Vacation star has also authored four books, including 2009’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Three years later, the book inspired the hit rom-com Think Like a Man, starring Regina Hall, Gabrielle Union, Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy and Taraji P. Henson. (Harvey had a cameo role as himself.)
Though the BET Award winner already had a successful career by the time the movie debuted, he was still surprised that the self-help book became a film.
“The possibility of it becoming a movie never even entered my mind. Not for a millisecond,” he told Reuters in April 2012. “When I wrote the book, my goal was to make the New York Times bestseller list. That was it. I had no idea the book would be as successful as it was.”
Keep scrolling for a look back at Harvey’s ups and downs over the years: