Jesse James (television personality)

Jesse Gregory James (born April 19, 1969) is an American entrepreneur, automotive mechanic, and television personality.

He is the founder of West Coast Choppers and former partner of Austin Speed Shop and current CEO of Jesse James Firearms Unlimited, both based in Austin, Texas.

James has four children: a daughter and a son with his first wife, Karla James, to whom he was married from 1991 to 2002; a daughter with his second wife, stripper/adult actress/producer Janine Lindemulder, to whom he was married from 2002 to 2004; and a son with his fifth wife, former adult actress and model Bonnie Rotten, whom he married in 2022.

In 1992, James opened West Coast Choppers in his mother's garage.

,additionally he has also built and is racing an off-road Trophy Truck and a Figure-8 race car.

In 2000, the Discovery Channel made the documentary Motorcycle Mania, which chronicled James' everyday life.

Following the success of the documentary, the Discovery Channel approached James With an offer to host a new show called Monster Garage where James and a crew of mechanics modified vehicles under a short deadline.

James later established Payupsucker Productions, under which he produced shows like History of the Chopper, Iraq Confidential with Jesse James and Green Scream, in which James plans to break the land speed record with an eco-friendly hydrogen car.

Through James' show "History of the Chopper" there are also glimpses of his involvement with the Hells Angels.

He also made an appearance on the Discovery Channel's Sons of Guns.

He appeared on the second season of Celebrity Apprentice.

Each celebrity played to raise money for a favorite charity; James selected to play for the Long Beach Education Foundation.

He also appeared in the 2004 skateboarding video game Tony Hawk's Underground 2.

James played an outside linebacker at the University of California in Riverside, but two injuries forced him to begin his professional career.

At age 19, he became a bouncer and then a bodyguard, notably for Slayer, Glenn Danzig, and Soundgarden.

On July 16, 2005, James married his third wife, actress Sandra Bullock.

They met when she arranged for her ten-year-old godson, a fan, to tour the set of Monster Garage.

James was the owner of the Cisco Burger restaurant, which opened on April 28, 2006, across the street from West Coast Choppers which has officially closed.

Due to his poor performance in raising funds, James was eliminated by Donald Trump on the second-to-last show (ultimately placing third) which aired May 3, 2009.

Trump repeatedly cited James' stoic refusal to contact then-wife Sandra Bullock to raise funds for the show's challenges, though other celebrities had no problem tapping high-rolling contacts for cash.

His show Jesse James Is a Dead Man premiered on Spike TV on May 31, 2009.

The show features James doing death-defying stunts.

The first episode set a rating record for Spike, drawing the largest audience ever for an unscripted series on the network, with 2 million viewers.

The show is produced by Spike TV, BASE Productions and James' company, PayupSucker Productions.

In conjunction with that appearance Marvel Comics created a special one-shot comic book where he evades death once again after considering retirement, and made it available in comic book stores for free distribution.

James appeared on an episode of Street Customs where he had his pickup truck customized by West Coast Customs.

He appeared in an advert for T-Mobile's Google mobile phone with Whoopi Goldberg and Phil Jackson.

Jesse appeared in special "Biker Build-Off" episodes of American Chopper in 2011 and 2012 for bike build-off competitions with Paul Teutul Jr.. (representing Paul Jr. Designs) and Paul Teutul Sr.. (representing Orange County Choppers), with Gas Monkey Garage (featured on the Discovery series Fast N' Loud) entering the competition in 2012.

James' Discovery Channel website states that his great-great-grandfather was the notorious outlaw's cousin.

However, Eric James, president of the James Preservation Trust, which tracks claims of being a relative of the outlaw, says it cannot find a record of him in the family tree and has asked him to provide a family genealogy and DNA sample for the trust to review; he has not provided the requested information.

He was the focus of a show chronicling some of the custom motorcycle builds in his TV series Jesse James: Monster Garage, which ran a shortened single season in 2012 on the Discovery Channel before being canceled.

James was the host of the reality TV shows Jesse James Is a Dead Man on Spike TV and Monster Garage on the Discovery Channel, and the focus of the documentary Motorcycle Mania, also on Discovery.

Jesse James appeared on Sons of Guns on March 28, 2012.

He asked the Red Jacket Firearms team to build a customized Browning Automatic Rifle for him and even assisted in the build himself.

James also had partial ownership in Austin Speed Shop in Austin, Texas, which he left in 2013 to focus on the re-opening of West Coast Choppers in Austin.

Other business ventures include the fan club Chopperdogs and Jesse's Girl clothing line.

James published the now-defunct custom-car magazine Garage.

In November 2013, Jesse James Firearms Unlimited unveiled its first two firearms, a 1911 pistol and an AR-15 rifle.

His first rifle-caliber suppressor was a basic reworking of an original Maxim design that he claimed could impossibly bend the laws of physics by offering a 78 dB rating at the muzzle, lower than even what the De Lisle carbine achieved in testing; although James was careful to note that it only achieved that number with subsonic ammunition that does not produce a sonic boom.

, James lives in Austin, Texas, operates Jesse James Fire Arms Unlimited, and manages the intellectual properties of West Coast Choppers.