Early life
Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, Willie Jones Jr., served in the United States Army, and the family moved frequently during her childhood before settling in Los Angeles, where her father worked as an electronics engineer at KJLH, the radio station owned by Stevie Wonder. She had a younger brother, Rodney Keith Jones (1971 to 2009).1
She grew up tall, and her father encouraged her toward basketball. Jones attended high school in Lynwood, California, and earned a basketball scholarship to Chapman University, where she also worked as a disc jockey at the student radio station. In 1986 she followed her coach to Colorado State University, where she changed majors several times, considering pre-law, accounting, and computer science before landing on communications. She left Colorado State without finishing her degree to pursue comedy.1
Career
Stand-up beginnings
Jones started doing stand-up in 1987 after a friend entered her in a "Funniest Person on Campus" contest, which she won. After leaving school she moved to Los Angeles, working day jobs at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles and at UPS while performing in clubs. Encouraged by comedians Mother Love and Dave Chappelle, she spent more than two years in New York City and appeared on BET's ComicView. Early sets back in Los Angeles at The Comedy Store drew poor responses; after opening for Jamie Foxx to a cold crowd, she took his advice to step away and "live life for a little while," and stopped performing for roughly three years to develop richer material.1
She returned to comedy and, by 2010, had worked her way up to prime slots at The Comedy Store. That same year her hour special Problem Child aired on Showtime. In 2012 Chris Rock saw her perform and championed her, reportedly telling SNL creator Lorne Michaels she was one of the funniest people he knew. Rock helped her land an SNL audition.1
Saturday Night Live (2014 to 2019)
In December 2013, SNL held a casting call after criticism that the show lacked a Black female cast member. Sasheer Zamata was hired as a featured player, while Jones and LaKendra Tookes were brought on as writers. Jones made her on-air debut during the May 3, 2014 "Weekend Update" segment, and on October 25, 2014 she made her debut as a featured player.1 At 47, she became the oldest performer ever hired onto the SNL cast.3 She was promoted to the repertory company and stayed through the 2018 to 2019 season. Her work earned her Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in both 2017 and 2018, plus a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for her writing.1
Jones announced her departure from SNL in 2019 after five seasons.4
Film and television
Jones appeared in Chris Rock's Top Five (2014) and in Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer's Trainwreck (2015) before her breakout role in the 2016 Ghostbusters (see below). Her later credits include Coming 2 America (2021), for which she won the MTV Movie & TV Award for Best Comedic Performance, and Good Burger 2 (2023). She has done voice work in animated features such as Sing (2016) and The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019).1
She has been a prolific television host: she fronted the revived Supermarket Sweep (2020 to 2022), hosted the 2017 BET Awards and the 2021 MTV Movie & TV Awards, and guest-hosted The Daily Show. Her exuberant, unfiltered live-tweeting of the 2016 Rio Olympics was so popular that NBC flew her to Brazil to cover events on the ground, a role she reprised at later Games. Her first full Netflix stand-up special, Leslie Jones: Time Machine, premiered in January 2020.5 In 2023 she published a memoir, Leslie F*cking Jones, with a foreword by Chris Rock. She was invited into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017.1
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
Jones plays Patty Tolan in director Paul Feig's 2016 reboot Ghostbusters: Answer the Call, one of the four central Ghostbusters alongside Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), and Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon). Patty is a New York City Transit Authority worker whose deep, practical knowledge of the city's history and infrastructure makes her invaluable to the team.2
The role was originally written with Melissa McCarthy in mind, and the surname Tolan was a deliberate nod to McCarthy's Irish heritage. According to Feig, he mentally recast the part for Jones after seeing her on SNL's "Weekend Update." Jones has said she lost 27 pounds during the shoot and leaned on Epsom salt baths, frequent massages, and twice-weekly chiropractic visits to handle the physical demands. Her stunt double on the film was Alyma Dorsey.2
After the film's July 2016 release, Jones was targeted by a coordinated campaign of racist and misogynistic abuse on Twitter, which led the platform to permanently ban Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos. Weeks later her personal website was hacked and defaced with private documents and stolen images. The incidents drew wide public support under the #LoveForLeslieJ hashtag, and Jones spoke about freedom of speech versus hate speech in subsequent interviews.6
Tie-in appearances
Jones is acknowledged by name in the in-universe tie-in book Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal (Three Rivers Press), thanked in the acknowledgments on page 215.7 The IDW Publishing comic Ghostbusters: Crossing Over Issue #3 contains a nod to her as well: on page 16, panel 4, the POV screen of Jillian Holtzmann's Ecto Goggles reads "1967," Jones's birth year.8
Personal life
Jones is a noted fan of Seattle Sounders FC and of RuPaul's Drag Race. As of 2026 she remains active in comedy, hosting, and film, and continues stand-up touring.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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"Leslie Jones (comedian)," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Jones_(comedian).
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Ghostbusters (2016), Sony Pictures / Columbia Pictures. Cast and crew credits: Patty Tolan played by Leslie Jones; "Patty" stunt double, Alyma Dorsey.
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"Leslie Jones," Britannica, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leslie-Jones.
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CNN, "Leslie Jones bids 'Saturday Night Live' farewell" (August 22, 2019), https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/entertainment/leslie-jones-snl-trnd.
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Variety, "Leslie Jones Sets New Comedy Special With Netflix" (October 1, 2019), https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/leslie-jones-netflix-comedy-special-1203356329/.
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Greene Jr., James (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Lyons Press, Guilford, CT. ISBN 978-1-4930-4824-3. Documents the 2016 Twitter harassment campaign against Jones, the permanent ban of Milo Yiannopoulos, and the subsequent hacking of her personal website.
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Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal (Three Rivers Press, 2016). Leslie Jones thanked by name in the acknowledgments, p. 215.
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Ghostbusters: Crossing Over Issue #3 (IDW Publishing, 2018), p. 16, panel 4. The POV screen of Jillian Holtzmann's Ecto Goggles reads "1967," Leslie Jones's birth year.
