Breaking news: Comedian, fashion commentator, Joan Rivers is dead

Late Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers, the sharp-tongued comedian, actress and fashion commentator, died Thursday following surgery complications, says a news report published by RollingStone.

She was 81.

The report continued: "It is with great sadness that I announce the death of my mother, Joan Rivers," said her daughter Melissa in a statement. "She passed peacefully at 1:17pm surrounded by family and close friends. My son and I would like to thank the doctors, nurses, and staff of Mount Sinai Hospital for the amazing care they provided for my mother.

Cooper and I have found ourselves humbled by the outpouring of love, support, and prayers we have received from around the world. They have been heard and appreciated. My mother’s greatest joy in life was to make people laugh. Although that is difficult to do right now, I know her final wish would be that we return to laughing soon."

Last week, Rivers stopped breathing while undergoing surgery on her throat. As TMZ reports, the comedian was in the middle of an operation on her vocal cords at a clinic when she was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Later that day, Rivers' daughter Melissa released a statement, saying that her mother was in stable but serious condition. "My mother would be so touched by the tributes and prayers that we have received from around the world," Melissa said at the time. On Saturday, USA Today reported that Rivers was in a medically induced coma. That same day, TMZ claimed she had been placed on life support and that her family would have to decide what to do within the days that followed.

Rivers began her career in New York City in the late Fifties, performing as an actress in plays and doing stand-up at comedy clubs. She established herself as a comedian who broke all cultural limits and taboos; an iconoclast unafraid of making jokes about serious matters. Over her six-decade career, she added Emmy-award-winning talk show host, bestselling author, playwright, director, jewelry designer and "red-carpet laureate," among other professions, to her résumé.

In her early days, Rivers scored appearances on Jack Paar's Tonight Show and a regular gig on Candid Camera, but her career took off after her first appearance alongside Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1965. Eventually, she became the permanent guest host on that show for three years.

While Rivers would become a mainstay on numerous talk and variety shows, including the Ed Sullivan Show, The Carol Burnett Show and Hollywood Squares, her relationship with Carson, whom she called a mentor, was the most instrumental to her career. She remained a regular guest and fill-in host on The Tonight Show into the early Eighties; around the same time she released her hit comedy album, What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most?.

Rivers published her first book, Having a Baby Can Be a Scream, in 1974 and went on to write 11 more books over the next four decades. Her two most recent titles, 2012's I Hate Everyone...Starting With Me and this year's Diary of Mad Diva, were both New York Times bestsellers.