Biography

Quit the Broadway show "I Hate Hamlet" mid-performance after his co-star Nicol Williamson ignored fight choreography and hit him with a sword. This situation was used as a plot in the NYPD Blue (1993) episode, Cold Heaters (1995).

While in his mid-20s and very ill with a likely-fatal type of leukemia, one of the hospital chaplains performed an ancient Jewish ritual on him in which his name was changed to fool the Angel of Death into not knowing who to come for. The name on his new birth certificate was "Chaim".

Wrote the book "Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors" (about his experience of being a leukemia patient) that was published in 1996 by Little, Brown, and Company. This book is reviewed and written about in great deal in the January, 2003 issue of "The Oprah Magazine" in an article about patient health-care advocacy.

In an interview on the NPR show "Talk of the Nation", Handler said that during negotiations with various Hollywood studio executives who were interested in optioning Handler's first book, "Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors", to be adapted into a movie, one agent tried to sign Handler by presenting the possibility that the movie might later get turned into a ride at Busch Gardens Amusement Park. "Time on Fire" is about Handler's long, difficult, and painful treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, and his anger at what he saw as the inhumanity of modern medical treatment. Handler joked to "Talk of the Nation" journalist Neal Conan that the ride might have been called "Patients of the Caribbean".

Participated in the 3rd Munchkin's Project Pink annual breast cancer awareness campaign to raise money for breast cancer research. The project consists of the donation of celebrity-decorated and autographed bath ducks, put up for auction.