Curb Your Enthusiasm Actor Was 76

Richard Lewis, the grasp of self-deprecating comedy who whined his technique to stardom with stand-up TV specials, a sold-out live performance at Carnegie Corridor and activates Something however Love and Curb Your Enthusiasm, has died. He was 76.

Lewis died peacefully Tuesday night time at his residence in Los Angeles after struggling a coronary heart assault, his publicist advised The Hollywood Reporter. The actor and comedian revealed in April that he had been living with Parkinson’s disease and was retiring from stand-up. 

“For the final three-and-a-half years, I’ve had type of a rocky time,” he mentioned on social media when sharing his well being woes publicly after wrapping Curb‘s twelfth season, which might ultimately be introduced because the final for the Larry David HBO comedy. Lewis had stepped away in 2021, showing on just one season 11 episode, and returned for the now-airing ultimate season.

Lewis, who was coping with sickness whereas they filmed season 12, “was a champ,” the present’s government producer Jeff Schaffer recently told THR. When discussing final week’s episode, which featured Lewis, Schaffer mentioned he was “doing implausible proper now, I’m very pleased to report. Having seen him for press and every little thing, he’s doing wonderful.” 

It was laborious to call a neurosis that Lewis couldn’t mine for laughs. “I’m a significant hypochondriac. I gained’t even masturbate anymore. I’m afraid I would give myself one thing,” he as soon as mentioned, most likely joking. He additionally known as himself the “Descartes of Nervousness; I panic, due to this fact I’m.” Appropriately, he nearly all the time wearing black.

Lewis paced nervously throughout his stand-up act, operating his fingers by his hair and waving his arms with exasperation. He had an extended drawback with substance abuse, and he confessed to being excessive the night time he carried out at New York’s Carnegie Corridor in 1989. He mentioned he had hassle remembering the standing ovations he obtained or anything that occurred through the 2 1/2-hour present, which he thought-about the apex of his profession.

In 1991, after he blended alcohol and medicines, he was rushed to the hospital, and the expertise shocked him into sobriety. He would chronicle his restoration in his 2002 autobiography, The Different Nice Despair: How I’m Overcoming, on a Day by day Foundation, at Least a Million Addictions and Dysfunctions and Discovering a Religious (Typically) Life.

As an actor, Lewis additionally portrayed Prince John for Mel Brooks in Robin Hood: Males in Tights (1993), performed the psychologist son of a used automobile supplier (Don Rickles) on the 1993 Fox sitcom Daddy Dearest and was a rabbi from 2002-04 on The WB’s seventh Heaven.

Lewis, nevertheless, was at his finest as a fictional model of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He and David performed transplanted New York stand-ups now dwelling in Los Angeles on the HBO comedy. 

“We’re heartbroken,” an HBO spokesperson shared in a press release. “His comedic brilliance, wit and expertise had been unmatched. Richard will all the time be a cherished member of the HBO and Curb Your Enthusiasm households. Our heartfelt condolences exit to his household, associates and all of the followers who may rely on Richard to brighten their days with laughter.”

David shared his personal assertion following the information of Lewis’ loss of life, writing: “Richard and I had been born three days aside in the identical hospital and for many of my life he’s been like a brother to me. He had that uncommon mixture of being the funniest particular person and in addition the sweetest. However at this time he made me sob, and for that I’ll by no means forgive him.”

Operating gags included making enjoyable of Lewis’ previous issues with substance abuse and his tendency so far stunning girls in the hunt for “the one,” solely to have David inadvertently destroy any probability of a relationship. (In actual life, Lewis married in 2005.)

In “The Finish,” the ultimate episode of Curb‘s fifth season, Lewis wants a kidney transplant, and each David and supervisor Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) develop into a match. The 2 argue that the opposite ought to donate. After a life-changing second, David decides he’ll make the sacrifice, however the surgical procedure doesn’t go effectively, and David suffers life-threatening issues. In the meantime, Lewis celebrates his new kidney by taking his newest girlfriend on trip.

The truth that the 2 labored so effectively collectively was humorous contemplating that they had been at odds after they had been youthful. Lewis preferred to joke that David tried to strangle him utilizing Lewis’ umbilical wire, and as youngsters, they attended the identical summer time sports activities camp and butted heads.

“I hated him,” Lewis told New Jersey Month-to-month in a 2015 interview. “We turned pleasant years later as younger comics in New York, however I seen one thing one night time. ‘There’s one thing about you I hate,’ I advised him. ‘Wait, you’re that Larry David from summer time camp.’ And he mentioned, ‘You’re that Richard Lewis.’ We practically got here to blows.”

Richard Philip Lewis was born in Brooklyn on June 29, 1947. He was raised in Englewood, New Jersey, the place his father labored as a caterer. His mom carried out in regional theater.

He didn’t look again on his childhood fondly. “It was fairly unhealthy. I didn’t see my father a lot,” he mentioned. “My dad was such a profitable caterer that he was booked on my bar mitzvah — and I had my occasion on a Tuesday. Speak about low shallowness. My father died younger and my sister and brother moved out by the point I used to be in junior excessive. So it was me and my mom, and we didn’t get alongside too effectively. She didn’t get me.” 

After graduating from Dwight Morrow Excessive Faculty in 1965, Lewis earned a level in advertising and marketing and communications from Ohio State College, then went to work writing advert copy for an company positioned above a pizza parlor in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.

At night time, Lewis would write jokes, and he offered materials to veteran New York comedian Morty Gunty and others. That inspired Lewis to develop his personal act, and his father’s 1971 loss of life prompted him to take to the stage. Quickly, he was acting at such New York hotspots as The Improv and Pips Comedy Membership. (Lewis credited David Brenner and Robert Klein for serving to him hone his act, and he counted Jonathan Winters as a father determine.)

The Prince of Ache made it to Johnny Carson’s Tonight Present in 1974 and gained traction with Diary of a Younger Comedian, a 1979 NBC telefilm produced by Lorne Michaels by which he performed a Jewish comedian who leaves New York to make a reputation for himself in Hollywood. When he doesn’t meet Lorne Greene immediately, he orders a bacon, lettuce and calcium sandwich from a well being meals retailer.

In 1982, Lewis appeared for the primary time on Late Evening With David Letterman, and the host mentioned he may cease by anytime he needed.

“The rationale that was so necessary to me … it wasn’t the fabric, it was my physicality,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2018. “I used to be an excessive amount of for the digital camera. I used to be shifting everywhere in the joint … [Letterman] type of turned me right into a youthful model of Oscar Levant on [Jack Paar’s The Tonight Show], simply sitting there, twitching away and simply screaming for assist in entrance of him.”

His TV specials included 1985’s ‘I’m in Ache’ Live performance, 1988’s The I’m Exhausted Live performance and 1990’s Richard Lewis: I’m Doomed.

Fearful he would neglect a humorous concept, Lewis continually wrote down potential bits on a authorized pad. He would tape the pages collectively and use them as a roadmap for an evening’s efficiency. (Lewis even introduced his taped pages to Carnegie Corridor.)

“I’m such a madman — I’m so obsessed in regards to the present, however that’s who I’m,” he said throughout a 2007 interview with the New York Observer. “I’m simply so wired by my time onstage, my head is full of photographs. It’s terrifying, but it surely’s additionally exhilarating. I’ll by no means not work like this.”

On the massive display, he teamed with fellow stand-ups Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer, Franklin Ajaye and Tim Thomerson in The Fallacious Guys (1988), then took on a co-starring position in 1989 on the ABC romantic sitcom Something however Love.

Set within the places of work of a Chicago journal, Lewis performed a veteran (and, sure, neurotic) columnist who discovered himself matching wits with a trainer turned author (Jamie Lee Curtis). Although they attempt to maintain their relationship skilled, they will’t assist however be attracted to one another. 

“I had been a stand-up for a very long time, however to get that huge community primetime factor, that was nice,” Lewis recalled in a 2007 interview with TV Information. “Impulsively I used to be on a promo in the course of Roseanne, and earlier than the top of the day, hundreds of thousands of individuals knew my face. It was only a complete different ballgame. So it was essential to me to have this collection final.”

Something however Love, by no means a rankings juggernaut, made it by 4 seasons earlier than it was yanked in 1992. “It was historic truly, as a result of we had been canceled by our personal studio [20th Century Fox, instead of the network],” Lewis advised TV Information. “It was a shocker. Jamie Lee and I drove as much as the soundstage, prepared for a Monday morning read-through of a brand new script, completely unaware that some higher-ups had determined we had been carried out.”

In 1997, he starred with Kevin Nealon as goofball TV comedy writers on ABC’s Hiller and Diller (1997), however that was canceled after 13 episodes, then starred as a school basketball coach in Recreation Day (1999).

Lewis additionally appeared as recurring characters on TV’s Impolite Awakening, ‘Til Loss of life and Blunt Speak (as a shrink); guest-starred on The Larry Sanders Present, Tales From the Crypt, Two and a Half Males, George Lopez and All people Hates Chris; and appeared on the massive display in That’s Sufficient (1987), As soon as Upon a Crime (1992), Wagons East (1994), Drunks (1995), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), The Elevator (1996), Hugo Pool (1997), Vamps (2012) and She’s Humorous That Method (2014). 

Survivors embrace his spouse, Joyce.

Jackie Strause and Christy Piña contributed to this report.