Joan Rivers
Host, Red Carpet Coverage and Fashion Police

Joan Rivers is one of the hardest working women in the business: comedienne, author, actress, playwright, screen writer, motion picture director, nightclub headliner, Emmy Award winning television talk-show hostess, business woman, and most importantly, mother to Melissa. She is also host of E! Entertainment Television's fashion reviews and, along with her daughter Melissa, hosts E!'s live pre-show commentary for the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and Emmy Awards telecasts.

In 1997, Joan added radio talk-show host to her list of accomplishments with the launch of "The Joan Rivers Show," which airs on WOR and is nationally syndicated in over 40 markets. For her efforts, she was recently named "Best Talk Show Host" at the New York Metro Achievement in Radio Awards. In addition, Rivers has had unprecedented success with the record-breaking 160 million dollars in sales of her "Joan Rivers Classics Collection" of jewelry, which bowed on QVC in 1990.

As an author, Rivers has penned eight books, most recently, Don't Count The Candles: Just Keep The Fire Lit, a look at aging and From Mother To Daughter: Thoughts and Advice on Life, Love and Marriage, which Joan wrote for Melissa for her marriage to John Endicott in New York City on December 12, 1998.

Rivers began her remarkable career entertaining in closet-like clubs and lounges (which often passed the hat in lieu of paying her salary). In 1960, she graduated to Greenwich Village cabarets and coffeehouses, and later honed her comedic skills at Chicago's renowned "Second City." Today she headlines the most prestigious concert venues across the country.

Her signature question, "Can we talk?" has reached such major proportions that the U.S. Government has officially registered it as a federal trademark.

As an aspiring comic in the early 60s, Joan auditioned seven times, unsuccessfully, for "The Tonight Show." Yet by 1983, 18 years after her first appearance with Johnny Carson, "The Tonight Show" broke tradition and named Joan as its sole permanent guest hostess, a position she held for the next three years. In May of 1994, Joan and Melissa co-starred in "Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story," an NBC television movie that traced their rocky mother-daughter relationship following the 1987 suicide of Joan's husband and Melissa's father, Edgar Rosenberg.

That same year, Joan was nominated for both a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for her outstanding performance as comedian Lenny Bruce's mother in the Broadway production of "Sally Marr and Her Escorts," which she also helped write.

In January of 1995, Joan combined forces with QVC and Tribune Entertainment on "Can We Shop?," a daily, one-hour syndicated strip combining celebrity interviews and the phenomenon of televised home shopping. That December, Abbeville Press published Jewelry by Joan Rivers, a coffee table book on Joan's jewelry.

Joan has made several guest appearances as Brooke Shields' mother on the hit TV series, "Suddenly Susan," in addition to her appearances on the daytime soap opera, "Another World."

Joan, who has been called the "queen of the barbed one-liners," is not only a devoted mother, but deeply committed to helping others less fortunate. She is a National spokesperson for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and an advocate for Suicide Prevention. Additionally, she has been actively involved in the war against AIDS since 1982 when she became the first celebrity to call attention to the impending AIDS crisis when she hosted and headlined the first AIDS benefit at the Backlot Theatre in Los Angeles. When no other celebrities would agree to participate, Joan, knowing "the show must go on," recruited three female impersonators to perform. In May of 1985, Joan assumed the center stage, once again on behalf of AIDS, this time at the Shubert Theatre in New York when she participated in "Comic Relief," a fundraiser co-produced and co-hosted by Mike Nichols and Elaine May. On November 16, 1985, Joan was presented with the Humanitarian Award at the Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center's annual "Friends of the Center" fund raiser in Hollywood in recognition of her on-going efforts in the AIDS crisis.

In August of 1989, Joan and her friend Andrea Marcovicci headlined two benefit performances, once again at the Backlot, to raise money for the Chris Brownlee Hospice in memory of two of their dear friends who succumbed to AIDS.

Leading the list of multiple awards bestowed upon Joan is an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Talk/Service Show Host" for "The Joan Rivers Show," in 1990. She was honored with the first-ever Harvard Instant Pudding Award in 1986 and the Harvard Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award in 1984, making her the only performer ever to have been honored twice by the prestigious dramatic society. Her other awards include the Jimmy Award, the Georgie from the American Guild of Variety Artists for "Best Comedienne" and "Nightclub Performer of the Year" from the New York Friars Club. She has twice been named "Las Vegas Comedienne of the Year" and has also received a Clio Award for "Best Performer in a Television Commercial." In 1989, she was honored with her own "Star" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Rivers resides in New York with her three dogs: Spike, Veronica and Lulu.

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