Josephine Victoria "Joy" Behar (/ˈbeɪhɑːr/; née Occhiuto; born October 7, 1942) is an American comedian, television host, actress, and playwright. She co-hosts the ABC talk show The View, on which she has appeared since the beginning of the series. For her work on The View, Behar won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2009. She hosted The Joy Behar Show on HLN from 2009 to 2011 and Joy Behar: Say Anything! on Current TV, from 2012 until the channel switched formats in August 2013. Behar's latest weekly late-night talk show, Late Night Joy, aired on TLC in 2015. She also wrote The Great Gasbag: An A–Z Study Guide to Surviving Trump World.

Behar was born Josephine Victoria Occhiuto in 1942 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the only child of a Roman Catholic family of Italian descent, hailing from Sant'Eufemia d'Aspromonte, Calabria. Her mother, Rosa Diane "Rose" (née Carbone), was a seamstress, and her father, Louis Ferdinand "Gino" Occhiuto, was a truck driver for Coca-Cola. Behar earned a BA in sociology from Queens College in 1964 and an MA in English education from Stony Brook University in 1966. From the late 1960s to the early 1970s, she taught English on Long Island at Lindenhurst Senior High School in Lindenhurst, New York. She studied acting at the HB Studio.

Behar started her career in show business in the early 1980s as a receptionist and later a producer on Good Morning America.

She was a stand-up comedian and made appearances on ABC's Good Morning America and The New Show, a short-lived Lorne Michaels NBC project. In 1987, she hosted a variety talk show on Lifetime Television called Way Off Broadway that included Larry David as a writer and performer. She also hosted the show Live from Queens; was a regular on NBC's Baby Boom; and continued to work the comedy club circuit. She had minor film roles including Cookie, This Is My Life, and Manhattan Murder Mystery. In the early 1990s, she hosted a talk-show on 77 WABC radio in New York City. She also made appearances on HBO comedy specials One Night Stand and Women of the Night 2.

In 1997, Behar became one of the original panelists of the ABC daytime talk show The View, which was co-created by Barbara Walters. Behar originally appeared only on the days when Walters was off, but she ultimately became a permanent co-host. Behar occasionally hosted a segment called "Joy's Comedy Corner" in which she presented both established and up-and-coming comedians.

In August 2009, Behar and the other co-hosts, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sherri Shepherd, and Walters, won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host following over a decade of nominations for the show.

On March 7, 2013, it was announced that Behar would be leaving the show at the end of that season. She told Deadline, "It seemed like the right time...You reach a point when you say to yourself, 'Do I want to keep doing this?' There are other things on my plate I want to do — I've been writing a play, I've been neglecting my standup". Her last show was on August 9, 2013, in which the program staged a This Is Your Life-style tribute to Behar.

After departing in 2013, Behar continued to guest co-host throughout 2014 and 2015. On August 25, 2015, ABC announced that Behar would return as a regular co-host starting with the premiere of the 19th season on September 8, 2015. Behar was quoted as saying, "Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. Plus, Steve was getting tired of applauding every time I gave my opinion. But I'm happy to be back home. And I'm looking forward to sticking my two cents into the hot topics, especially now that Hillary and the Donald are in the spotlight."