Who

Until recently, the well-preserved queen of catty commentary and long-time Hollywood Squares fixture hosted red carpet specials on the TV Guide Channel. Fortunately, she has a chintzy jewelry and beauty line on QVC to fall back on.

Backstory

Joan Molinsky graduated from Barnard ("Class of None-of-Your-Fucking-Business") and began her career as a stand-up comic and gag writer—she wrote throw-away lines for Zsa Zsa Gabor for $4 a joke—before working on Candid Camera, as a popular headliner in Las Vegas, and as guest host of The Tonight Show. The bitchy, baudy Rivers really hit her stride in the 1980s: In 1986, Barry Diller hired her to host her own late-night talk show on Fox (a move that also managed to end her longtime friendship with Johnny Carson). The program was cancelled soon after, but Rivers continued to headline in Vegas, and went on to host a daytime chat show from 1989 to 1994. She also cashed in on her fame, launching a line of gaudy costume jewelry with QVC in 1990. In 1996, E! hired her to interrogate award show arrivals, and her biting fashion critiques became the stuff of legend. Rivers and daughter Melissa moved their red carpet antics to the TV Guide Channel in 2005, scoring a reported $8 million contract.

Recently

In April 2007, the venomous Rivers duo was put out to pasture by TV Guide in favor of pillow-lipped Lisa Rinna and washed-up boy bander Joey Fatone. Rivers is keeping busy, though. She occasionally performs on stage, she voices the character of Shirley the Sheep on the animated PBS series Jakers!, and after more than a decade and a half, she's still hawking her line of faux jewels on QVC. Since its debut, the collection has grossed more than half a billion dollars, and she's expanded in recent years with a line of "Absolutely Magic" beauty products such as anti-aging hand creams. (If you believe Rivers stays young-looking with these creams and potions, we have some simulated gemstones we'd like to sell you.) She also occasionally appears in commercials, like the one for Geico in which she mocked her own inability to smile.

The look

Rivers has the taut, expressionless face of a ventriloquist's dummy, and she spends big money to keep it that way: She's had multiple nose jobs, multiple face lifts, multiple eye lifts, cheek implants, and more; dermatologist-to-the-stars Pat Wexler is responsible for regularly pumping Rivers' wrinkle-free, septuagenarian face full of Botox and collagen. In 2007, she said that her regular plastic surgeon has refused to perform any additional surgeries on her. We're guessing there's another doc out there somewhere who'd be more than happy to oblige should Rivers decide to continue the human science experiment.

Personal

Rivers has been married twice. She divorced her first husband, Jimmy Sanger, after six months. Her second husband, the British-born TV producer Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide by overdosing on Valium three days after Rivers ended their 20-year marriage. (She's since admitted that she was having liposuction the night he died.) She has one daughter, Melissa, from her marriage to Rosenberg. Joan hasn't remarried since, but hope springs eternal. In 2006, she signed up with Match.com in search of a smart, elegant man between 65 and 75—no tattoos or piercings, please.

Habitat

Rivers lives with her dogs Lulu and Max on 62nd Street off Fifth Avenue in an over-the-top, 18th-century style duplex apartment. She has a weekend home in New Milford, Connecticut.

True story

Rivers had a long-running war with Victoria Principal, and once blurted out the Dallas star's home phone number on air, prompting Principal to sue for $3 million. The suit was later settled for an undisclosed sum.