Joan Rivers

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June 8, 1933

Joan Molinksky

Actress

2011 Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? (TV series)

2008 Spaceballs: The Animated Series (TV series)

2005 Less Than Perfect (TV series)

2004 Dave the Barbarian (TV series) (voice)

2004 Shrek 2 (voice)

2002 Hip! Edgy! Quirky!

2000 Whispers: An Elephant's Tale (voice)

2000 The Intern

1999 Goosed

1998-1999 Suddenly Susan (TV series)

1999 KnitWits Revisited (TV movie)

1997 Another World (TV series)

1997 KnitWits (short)

1997 Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (TV series)(voice)

1995 Napoleon (voice)

1992 Lady Boss (TV movie)

1990 How to Murder a Millionaire (TV movie)

1989 Look Who's Talking (voice) (uncredited)

1987 Spaceballs (voice)

1987 Les Patterson Saves the World (uncredited)

1984 The Muppets Take Manhattan

1983 The Love Boat (TV series)

1978 Rabbit Test

1972-1977 The Electric Company (TV series)

1973 Needles and Pins (TV series)

1973 Here's Lucy (TV series)

1973 The Shape of Things (TV movie)

1968 The Swimmer

Writer

2006 Joan Rivers: Before Melissa Pulls the Plug (TV movie)

2006 Straight Talk (TV movie)

2004 CMT: 40 Greatest Done Me Wrong Songs (TV special)

1986-1987 The Late Show (TV series)

1985 Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abromowitz (TV movie)

1983 Saturday Night Live (TV series)

1978 Rabbit Test

1973 The Girl Most Likely to... (TV movie)

Director

1978 Rabbit Test

Appearances

Celebrity Ghost Stories (1 episode, 2011)

2010 The Colbert Report (TV series) (voice)

2008-2010 Entertainment Tonight (TV series)

2010 Late Show with David Letterman (TV series)

1997-2010 The Charlie Rose Show (TV series)

2004-2010 Larry King Live (TV series)

2003-2010 The View (TV series)

2009-2010 The Apprentice (TV series)

2010 The Wendy Williams Show (TV series)

2009-2010 Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (TV series)

2010 The Battle for Late Night (TV documentary)

2010 Fashion Police: The 2010 Academy Awards (TV movie)

2009-2010 Rachael Ray (TV series)

2004-2010 Nip/Tuck (TV series) (uncredited)

2010 Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (documentary)

2007-2010 Jimmy Kimmel Live! (TV series)

2010 Piers Morgan On... (TV series)

2007-2009 The Graham Norton Show (TV series)

2009 Celebrity Ghost Stories (TV series)

2009 Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers (TV movie)

2009 How'd You Get So Rich? (TV series)

Z Rock (TV series)

2009 The Bonnie Hunt Show (TV series)

2009 Just for Laughs (TV series)

2009 Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America (TV series documentary)

2009 What's the Name of the Dame? (documentary)

2008 The Cho Show (TV series)

2005-2008 Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List (TV series)

2008 Celebrity Family Feud (TV series)

2008 Loose Women (TV series)

2008 The 6th Annual TV Land Awards (TV movie)

2007-2008 Martha (TV series)

2008 Shrink Rap (TV series)

2008 Access Hollywood (TV series)

2008 Sunday Morning Shootout (TV series)

2008 George Carlin: Mark Twain Prize (TV movie)

2004-2007 Jack Dee Live at the Apollo (TV series)

2007 The Royal Variety Performance 2007 (TV movie)

2001-2007 E! True Hollywood Story (TV series documentary)

2004-2007 Parkinson (TV series)

2007 Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (documentary)

2006-2007 8 Out of 10 Cats (TV series)

2007 Making Trouble (documentary)

2000-2007 Live with Regis and Kelly (TV series)

2007 100 Greatest Stand-Ups (TV documentary)

2007 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Academy Awards (TV movie)

2007 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Grammy Awards (TV movie)

2007 Golden Globes Fashion Wrap with Joan and Melissa (TV movie)

2007 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Golden Globe Awards (TV movie)

2007 The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols (TV documentary)

2006 Howard Stern on Demand (TV series)

2006 The Electric Company's Greatest Hits & Bits (TV documentary)

2006 Joan Rivers: Before Melissa Pulls the Plug (TV movie)

2004-2006 The Joan Rivers Position (TV series)

2006 Boston Legal (TV series)

2006 Straight Talk (TV movie)

2006 Today (TV series) (uncredited)

2006 The Story of Light Entertainment (TV mini-series documentary)

2006 Emmy Awards Fashion Wrap with Joan and Melissa (TV movie)

2006 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Emmys (TV movie)

2006 The 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (TV special)

2006 Girls Who Do: Comedy (TV series documentary)

2006 Tom Green Live! (TV series) (voice)

2006 Academy Awards Fashion Wrap with Joan and Melissa (TV movie)

2006 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Academy Awards (TV movie)

2005-2006 The Tony Danza Show (TV series)

2006 An Audience with Joan Rivers (TV movie)

2006 The 50 Greatest Comedy Films (TV documentary)

2005 Joan & Melissa: Live at the CMA Awards (TV special)

1989-2005 This Morning (TV series)

2005 The Paul O'Grady Show (TV series)

2005 50 Questions of Political Incorrectness (TV documentary)

2005 Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (TV series)

2005 Favouritism (TV series)

2005 Spaceballs: The Documentary (video documentary short)

2005 Britain's 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches (TV documentary)

2005 Distinguished Artists (TV series)

2005 The Late Late Show (TV series)

2005 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Academy Awards (TV special)

2005 Good Day Live (TV series)

2005 Late Night with Conan O'Brien (TV series) (uncredited)

2005 The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (TV series)

2005 Nigella (TV series)

2005 The Comedians' Comedian (TV documentary)

2005 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Grammys (TV special)

2005 Joan & Melissa: Live at the Golden Globes (TV special)

2004 Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde (TV documentary)

2004 Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway (TV series)

1994-2004 Howard Stern (TV series)

2004 First Daughter

2004 CMT: 40 Greatest Done Me Wrong Songs (TV special)

2004 Funny Already: A History of Jewish Comedy (TV documentary)

2004 The Best of 'So Graham Norton' (video)

2004 The Graham Norton Effect (TV series)

2004 ALF's Hit Talk Show (TV series)

1999-2004 Hollywood Squares (TV series)

2004 Bob Monkhouse: A BAFTA Tribute (TV special documentary)

2004 Just for Laughs (TV series)

2004 Film '72 (TV series)

2004 Live from the Red Carpet: The 2004 Academy Awards (TV movie)

2004 I'm with Her (TV series)

2004 NY Graham Norton (TV series)

2004 Live from the Red Carpet: The 2004 Grammy Awards (TV movie)

2003 The 100 Greatest Musicals (TV documentary)

2003 The Wayne Brady Show (TV series)

2003 When I Was a Girl (TV series)

2003 Heroes of Jewish Comedy (TV mini-series documentary)

2003 100 Years of Hope and Humor (TV special)

2003 Live from the Red Carpet: The 2003 Academy Awards (TV movie)

2003 I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! (TV series)

2002 V Graham Norton (TV series)

2002 Cleavage (TV documentary)

2002 The South Bank Show (TV series documentary)

1998-2002 Biography (TV series documentary)

2002 Curb Your Enthusiasm (TV series)

2002 E! News Daily (TV series)

2002 Just for Laughs (TV documentary)

2002 Fashion Police Cannes 2002 (TV movie)

2002 The Hollywood Greats (TV series documentary)

2002 Live from the Red Carpet: The 2002 Academy Awards (TV special)

2002 Stars: An Oscar's Party (TV documentary)

2002 Heroes of Black Comedy (TV mini-series documentary)

2002 Live from the Red Carpet: The 2002 People's Choice Awards (TV special)

2002 The Making and Meaning of 'We Are Family' (documentary)

2001 The Human Face (TV mini-series documentary)

2000 So Graham Norton (TV series)

2000 The Talk Show Story (TV mini-series documentary)

2000 Intimate Portrait (TV series documentary)

1999 Heroes of Comedy (TV series documentary)

1999 The Howard Stern Radio Show (TV series)

1999 The Hollywood Fashion Machine (TV series documentary)

1997 Noel's House Party (TV series)

1997 The Rosie O'Donnell Show (TV series)

1997 50 Years of Television: A Celebration of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Golden Anniversary (TV documentary)

1996 The Daily Show (TV series)

1995 Clive Anderson Talks Back (TV series)

1995 Can We Shop? (TV series)

1994 The 48th Annual Tony Awards (TV special)

1994 Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story (TV movie)

1994 Serial Mom

1994 Des O'Connor Tonight (TV series)

1989-1993 The Joan Rivers Show (TV series)

1993 The Howard Stern Interview (TV series)

1993 Public Enemy #2

1992 The 6th Annual American Comedy Awards (TV movie)

1990-1992 The Howard Stern Show (TV series)

1991 Tonight with Jonathan Ross (TV series)

1991 Alan King: Inside the Comedy Mind (TV series)

1989-1991 CBS This Morning (TV series)

1991 Good Morning America (TV series)

1991 Square One TV (TV series)

1991 Comic Relief IV (TV movie)

1991 The Full Wax (TV series)

1990 The Horror Hall of Fame (TV documentary)

1990 The 44th Annual Tony Awards (TV special)

1990 Night of 100 Stars III (TV movie)

1978-1990 The Phil Donahue Show (TV series)

1990 227 (TV series)

1990 Happy Birthday, Bugs!: 50 Looney Years (TV documentary)

1989 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (TV movie)

1986-1989 The New Hollywood Squares (TV series)

1988 Offshore Television (TV series)

1988 Christmas Special (TV special)

1987 The Dame Edna Experience (TV series)

1986-1987 The Late Show (TV series)

1987 Aspel & Company (TV series)

1987 The 39th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards

1986 NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration (TV special documentary)

1965-1986 The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (TV series)

1986 WrestleMania 2 (video)

1986 Joan Rivers: Can We Talk? (TV series)

1986 George Burns' 90th Birthday Party: A Very Special Special (TV movie)

1985 America (TV series)

1983-1985 The Bob Monkhouse Show (TV series)

1985 Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abromowitz (TV movie)

1984 Johnny Carson Presents the Tonight Show Comedians (TV movie)

1984 On Stage America (TV series)

1984 An Audience with Joan Rivers (TV movie)

1984 The 26th Annual Grammy Awards (TV special)

1984 Garry Shandling: Alone in Vegas (TV movie)

1983 Saturday Night Live (TV series)

1982 The Barbara Walters Special (TV series)

1981 Uncle Scam

1981 Lily: Sold Out (TV movie)

1980 Circus of the Stars #5 (TV special documentary)

1970-1980 The Hollywood Squares (TV series)

1978 America 2-Night (TV series)

1978 ABC Presents Tomorrow's Stars (TV movie)

1978 The Jim Nabors Show (TV series)

1977 Happy Birthday, Las Vegas (TV special)

1969-1976 The Mike Douglas Show (TV series)

1976 The Second Annual Comedy Awards (TV movie)

1975 The Magnificent Marble Machine (TV series)

1970-1975 The Carol Burnett Show (TV series)

1974 Dinah! (TV series)

1971-1973 Flip (TV series)

1973 Stand Up and Cheer (TV series)

1971 The Hollywood Squares (TV series)

1971 Can You Top This (TV series)

1971 The Pearl Bailey Show (TV series)

1970 Concentration (TV series)

1966-1970 The Ed Sullivan Show (TV series)

1970 The Movie Game (TV series)

1969 You're Putting Me On (TV series)

1969 The David Frost Show (TV series)

1967-1969 Personality (TV series)

1969 The Joan Rivers Show (TV series)

1968 Frost on Sunday (TV series)

1965-1967 Girl Talk (TV series)

1967 The Match Game (TV series)

1966 The Hollywood Palace (TV series)

1966 The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show (TV series)

1965 Once Upon a Coffee House

Enter Talking

Still Talking

Bouncing Back: I've Survived Everything ... and I Mean Everything ... and You Can Too!

Don't Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit!

Having a Baby Can Be a Scream

The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz

Daytime Emmy Awards

2009 Nominated Daytime Emmy Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for: "Arthur" (1996)

1990 Won Daytime Emmy Outstanding Talk/Service Show Host for: "The Joan Rivers Show" (1989)

Golden Apple Awards

1983 Won Sour Apple

Hasty Pudding Theatricals, USA

1984 Won Woman of the Year

Walk of Fame (Hollywood)

1989 Won Star on the Walk of Fame Television At 7030 Hollywood Blvd.

[ View All Photos ]

As the Second World War was winding down, little Joan Molinksky was spending her summer at Camp Kinni Kinnic in the woods of Vermont. The camp director sent a letter home to her parents: "Joan is a born leader, but you have got to watch her. She could become either another Truman - or a Hitler." All Joanie wanted was to play Snow White in the camp play. She got cast as Dopey. Something inside her swore she would never be dopey again.

The road from Joan Molinsky, Dopey, to Joan Rivers, one of the savviest, sharpest, and most successful comedians in showbiz, began in 1933, in Larchmont, New York, a largely Jewish town in suburban Westchester. Her upper-middle-class parents had her whole future mapped out for her: respectable Jewish summer camp, respectable Jewish values, and, God willing, a respectable Jewish husband. Joan had other ideas: "I didn't start out to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actress and I fell into the comedy because I was funny at the office and I found that was a way to make a little money, waiting to be an actress." The straitlaced Molinskys were horrified at Joan's decision and told their daughter that showbiz was filled with prostitutes and drug peddlers - certainly not the place for their nice Barnard-educated daughter.

A struggling acting career was all that seemed in the cards for Joan in the late 1950s. "I had no woman that I grew up watching saying, 'I'd like to do that,'" she said about her comedy aspirations. "But very early on, while I was still in college, someone brought me to see Lenny Bruce. And it was absolutely an epiphany for me, because he absolutely said what everyone thought." Despite her parents' protestations and embarrassment, Rivers persisted as a comedian. No matter how crummy the joint she played, she still saw herself as a nice Ivy League graduate: black dress, a string of pearls, nicely done hairdo. "It was a very tough road in those days, especially for women, because if you were at all attractive, you weren't supposed to be funny. I had to come onstage and look like a nice girl but still do jokes, and I didn't know where to go."

In the beginning, she went wherever her "sleazo" agent sent her - often to the Catskills, because she owned a beat-up Buick and could drive the talent back and forth to the city. Her driving skills may have been better than her discretion at that point; one night, after playing a gig on the borscht belt, she recounted, "I came out after one of these black singers and they had applauded him so amazingly, I said, 'I'm so glad you loved my husband.' Well, I could have just gone home right there."

But home in Larchmont, where she was still living with her parents, was no bargain, either. As a change of pace, she took a gig in Chicago in 1962 with Second City, the groundbreaking improvisation troupe that was the darling of the city's intelligentsia. Still, Rivers felt that the company's high level of literary and cultural allusions had little to do with her own experience and personality. "So I told the truth about my life and I spoke things that they gasped at," she said. When she returned to New York, she tapped into her own frustrating past and projected a disappointing future:

My mother is desperate for me to get married. Outside our house she put a sign: "Last girl before freeway."

Rivers said, "People would just go, 'What, is that true?'" They didn't know what to think of me." Maybe not, but they still enjoyed her as she worked her way up the ladder from appearances with Jack Paar to The Ed Sullivan Show to a long-awaited debut on the New York based Tonight Show in 1965. "They brought me on the Carson show as a girl writer - they couldn't say I was a comedian - and at the very end of the evening he said to me on camera, 'You're gonna be a star.' And that changed my whole life." She began appealing to a cadre of women in the audience who understood the contemporary anxiety of trying to make themselves and their families or husbands both happy at the same time. "I was very lucky because I was the only woman at that time coming up. [The other comedians of my generation] had our own voices and our own things to say. None of us wanted to say, 'My mother-in-law,' because we didn't have a mother-in-law."

When Rivers did get a mother-in-law in 1967, after marrying producer Edgar Rosenberg (she had a brief, unsuccessful first marriage in the late 1950s), she could no longer pretend she couldn't get a date, so she approached her act from a new angle. Visibly pregnant, she would remark, "My husband is mentally dressing me." And although it was unheard of to say "pregnant" on national television, Rivers turned her nine months of gestation into some of her best material. When describing what she would say to the delivery nurse: "Knock me out with the first pain, and wake me up when the hairdresser arrives."

Audiences ate her up, because, like all good comedy, her remarks - however hysterically rendered - were the articulated thoughts of what her fans knew to be so. "I truly am the one that stands up and goes, 'No, wrong way.' How we say, 'Oh, beauty doesn't count.' Go tell that to a girl who hasn't been asked to dance. It's all such lies. So why don't we say to everybody, 'Beauty does count, so make yourself look good'?" As Rivers moved into the 1970s and '80s, her comedy got edgier, her wisecracks more acerbic, her language saltier. She was a huge attraction on the Vegas and resort circuits, where she could work uncensored, while at the same time developing a wide fan base appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where Carson made her the permanent guest host in the mid-1980s. By then, Rivers was training her sights on targets other than Joan Rivers.

She turned a corner and began taking on the major celebrities of her day; it was a winning, if vitriolic, addition to her act, and she adopted her catchphrase - "Can we talk?" - as a way of connecting directly with her audience. It seemed like a natural evolution: "It was stupid to worship a fat lady like Elizabeth Taylor when she was fat. If I heard on more person say, 'She's the most beautiful woman in the world' - she's the most beautiful three women in the world at this point." Taylor was, shall we say, a wide target for Rivers - "Liz has more chins than a Chinese phone book" - and some of her other observations could cut pretty deep:

Katharine Hepburn beat me out of a Shake 'n Bake commercial. Why couldn't she just say she had Parkinson's? She made us feel bad.

As America kept indulging its appetite for celebrity antics, Rivers rode the wave to even greater fame. She suffered some major setbacks, such as the failure of her own talk show, the suicide of her husband, Edgar, and in many ways - launching her own line of products, becoming a red carpet commentator, indulging in the glories of plastic surgery - she has embraced the perquisites of the celebrities she disparages. But beneath Rivers's admittedly phony exterior lurks a wit that will always target the truth, like a heat-seeking missile. After 9/11, she addressed her remarks to the widows of that tragedy, and by extension, the rest of us:

Nobody would rather have a check than the husband? Anyone married over ten years? Go home tonight, and when he's lying in bed, and he's kind of drooling, and the hair is coming out of his ears and those ugly feet with the broken toes and the white guck on the bottom are sticking out - look at him and think, "Harry or a check? Harry or Tiffany's?" And see what you come back with.

It all hits home with Joan Rivers because, in the end, her home in Larchmont, with its misguided values, was where it all started. "Hypocrisy will eventually turn into lies," she wrote in her memoir, "until you become my mother and my sister, who always had to be the Molinskys of Larchmont and never found a way based on reality. That is what my act is all about."

I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.

Can we talk?!- trademark

I want them to know I don't think I'm wonderful, or better than they are. Part of comedy is saying:
I am you and you are me, and we're all feeling the same thing.

She had her first cosmetic surgery procedure (an eye-lift) in 1965 at age 32.

The majority of her plastic surgery was performed by Santa Monica surgeon Steven Hoefflin (who also performed plastic surgery on Michael Jackson's nose). She also receives Botox and collagen injections every four months from New York City dermatologist Patricia.

She is a vegetarian.