28 February 2024
(NEXSTAR) – Richard Lewis, a comedian and actor who played an exaggerated version of himself in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” has died. He was 76 years old.
Lewis died in his Los Angeles home after suffering a heart attack, his publicist Jeff Abraham said.
The comedian was known for wearing all black while exploring his neuroses in frantic, stream-of-consciousness diatribes, leading to his nickname “The Prince of Pain.”
The actor revealed last year that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. “Luckily, I got it late in life, and they say you progress very slowly if at all, and I’m on the right meds, so I’m cool,” he said at the time. “I’m finished with stand-up. I’m just focusing on writing and acting.”
FILE – Comedian Richard Lewis attends an NBA basketball game in Los Angeles on Dec. 25, 2012. (AP Photo/Alex Gallardo, File)
A regular performer in clubs and on late-night TV for decades, Lewis also played Marty Gold, the romantic co-lead opposite Jamie Lee Curtis, in the ABC series “Anything But Love” and the reliably neurotic Prince John in “Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men In Tights.” He re-introduced himself to a new generation opposite Larry David in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” kvetching regularly.
“I’m paranoid about everything in my life. Even at home. On my stationary bike, I have a rear-view mirror, which I’m not thrilled about,” he once joked onstage. To Jimmy Kimmel he said: “This morning, I tried to go to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I counted sheep but I only had six of them and they all had hip replacements.”
Comedy Central named Lewis one of the top 50 stand-up comedians of all time and he earned a berth in GQ magazine’s list of the “20th Century’s Most Influential Humorists.” He lent his humor for charity causes, including Comic Relief and Comedy Gives Back.
“Watching his stand-up is like sitting in on a very funny and often dark therapy session,” the Los Angeles Times said in 2014. The Philadelphia’s City Paper called him “the Jimi Hendrix of monologists.” Mel Brooks once said he “may just be the Franz Kafka of modern-day comedy.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.