Amy Schumer was born in Manhattan where up until she was age of 9, her family ran a very successful furniture company. Their business went bankrupt after her father, asecond cousin of U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, fell ill withmultiple sclerosis. The family had to relocate to Long Island where her parents divorced. This deeply affected her and her approach to life. " We were really rich when we were kids and then my dad got MS and we lost everything, we moved from a huge house to this tiny little kind of like hovel, and I am the middle child, so I was kind of forced to step up and I was just kind of the caretaker of everybody … Those moments of tragedy, the very hard struggle is what I think defines us. That’s why dating for me, I think is just different, when you have a parent who is ill, it just makes you see things differently. So I start dating a guy and I like him but I am like, I want him to push my wheelchair and my mind goes there." Those events also inform the autobiographically inspired Trainwreck for which Schumer is nominated this year as Best Actress – Comedy or Musical.

After completing college she returned to New York City where she worked as a waitress and bartender. She also began performing at local comedy clubs. She started doing stand-up in 2004, when she first performed at Gotham Comedy Club. “To be really great, you need to be naturally funny in order to stand out,” she says. “But you can work at it, and find the best vehicle that you have to communicate what you're saying to people.”

She auditioned for Last Comic Standing and advanced to the finals, placing fourth. In 2008 she co-starred in the Comedy Central reality show Reality Bites Back. In 2011 she released her first comedy album, Cutting. She appeared on The Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen where she gained a lot more exposure. A year later she got her own comedy special, Mostly Sexy Stuff, on Comedy Central.

Schumer appeared in various television shows such as;Girls, 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Delocated. She acted in three films in 2012: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Sleepwalk with Me, and Price Check. That same year she began working on her sketch comedy show;Inside Amy Schumer for which she won an Emmy for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series in 2015. She currently has a new comedy special on HBO entitled Amy Schumer Live at the Apollo. She has also been named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

Schumer’s irreverent humor – including that of Trainwreck– is rooted in feminist satire and female empowerment and has struck a cultural nerve as many of her Inside sketches have gone viral. The comedienne has been equally outspoken in interviews an public speeches about women’s self worth and sexual affirmation in the face of prevailing cultural and body stereotypes.

"I am 160 pounds and if I go out, I could have sex with someone and I get male attention," she says, "You don’t have to look like all of these girls." Recently she was photographed nude for the Pirelli calendar. She has said about her herself, “I think of myself as a fairly attractive girl and always have, thanks to my mom. I was brought into this world thinking I was gorgeous because my mother was extremely devoted to this notion.” Currently she is in a relationship with furniture designer, Ben Hanisch. "No, I'm not going to apologize for who I am, and I'm going to actually love the skin that I'm in. I'm not gonna be striving for some other version of myself.”