Sunday, May 24, 2009

Joan Rivers / This much I Know / I hate my body

Joan Rivers

Interview

This much I know

I hate my body. Every morning I wake up and say: "What have you done to me now, God?"

Joan Rivers, comedian, 75, London

Elizabeth Day

Sunday 24 May 2009

Funny is all in the genes. You can't learn funny. My father was hilarious. He was a physician and his patients would laugh until they died. Literally.

I was the outcast of the family. We were very education oriented. If I'd said I wanted to be a physicist or the president, my parents would have said: "Absolutely." When I said: "Show business" they went out of their minds. They thought I'd end up in the circus performing in bad tights.

I'm a total pessimist. It's not that the glass is half empty. Someone stole the glass.

A lot of Hollywood stars aren't aware that adopting a child isn't just a photo op. I was at a dinner party where one actress had adopted a child from Africa and she was saying: "I want my children to know their heritage." I said: "Lock them in a room and throw them a jar of flies."

I think my daughter and I are close because we live 3,000 miles apart.Melissa is totally the opposite of me in many ways, but I know she's got my back and I've got hers.

I love being recognised. It makes the whole world your home town. When my husband committed suicide [Rivers's second husband, the film producer Edgar Rosenberg, overdosed on prescription drugs in 1987] I went to New York and a man collecting the garbage would say: "Hey Joanie! You'll get through this." People in the grocery store would say: "I lit a candle for you last night." I thought: "My God, the whole city cares." People can be a great comfort.

I didn't feel guilty [when Rosenberg died]. I was as good a wife as I could have been to him. He was such a complicated man. He'd been going to a psychiatrist, and after he killed himself the psychiatrist came to my house and said: "I had no idea." That's how closed off he was.

The New York Times says you can have six great loves in your life. I still have two to go, and they better hurry. I like a man my age. But a man my age likes a 25-year-old centrefold.

There's nothing nice about getting older. You do not get wiser - you just forget how stupid you are.

I've never been happy with how I look. I hate my body. Every morning I wake up and say: "What have you done to me now, God?" These days I wear a miniskirt and my breasts hang out from under the hems. But then if I were good-looking I might never have been funny.

If plastic surgery makes you feel better, do it. All women in our business do it. They say: "I've never had anything done." Meanwhile they go to the bathroom and shit through their ears.

When I get heckled, I play the age card: "I've been doing this for 45 years and I don't want to destroy your life now", whereas in truth I have nothing to say.

I lived for nine years with a man who lost one leg in the second world war. It took him a good four months before he took his leg off in front of me. Then after a while you're stepping over it to get to the bathroom.

I'm very formal. I have finger bowls. My apartment looks like the Ritz. The only thing you are allowed to point at over the dinner table is French pastries.

I voted for Obama but I'm getting sick of Michelle's arms. OK, so you work out. Even Jackie O wore a jacket.

I don't believe in an afterlife. I think it will be like when they put you under for an operation and it's a black, velvet sleep. Wonderful.

THE GUARDIAN