Curb your enthusiasm The actor was 76 years old.

Richard Lewis, the master of self-deprecating comedy who made his way to stardom with stand-up television specials, a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall and turns on Everything but love and Curb your enthusiasm, has died. She was 76 years old.

Lewis died peacefully Tuesday night at his Los Angeles home after suffering a heart attack, his publicist said. 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.

“Over the last three and a half years, I’ve been going through some tough times,” she said on social media when she publicly shared her health issues after breaking up. CurbThe twelfth season, which would eventually be announced as the last of the Larry David HBO comedy. Lewis had stepped away in 2021, appearing in just one episode of season 11 and returning for the final season now airing.

Lewis, who was dealing with an illness while filming season 12, “was a champ,” the show’s executive producer, Jeff Schaffer, recently said. THR. Discussing last week’s episode, which featured Lewis, Schaffer said he was “doing fantastic right now, I’m very happy to report. Having seen it in the press and all that, he is doing amazing.”

It was difficult to name a neurosis that Lewis couldn’t use to laugh at. “I’m a big hypochondriac. I won’t even masturbate anymore. I’m afraid to give myself something,” he once said, probably jokingly. He also called himself the “Descartes of anxiety; I panic, therefore I exist.” As expected, he almost always wore black.

Lewis paced nervously during his stand-up act, running his fingers through his hair and waving his arms in exasperation. He had a long problem with substance abuse and confessed to being high on drugs the night he performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1989. He said he had trouble remembering the ovations he received or anything else that happened during the two and a half years. . one-hour show, which he considered the pinnacle of his career.

In 1991, after mixing alcohol and drugs, he was rushed to the hospital and the experience sobered him. He would chronicle his recovery in his 2002 autobiography, The other great depression: how I am overcoming, daily, at least a million addictions and dysfunctions and finding a spiritual life (sometimes).

As an actor, Lewis also played Prince John for Mel Brooks in Robin Hood: men in tights (1993), he played the psychologist son of a used car dealer (Don Rickles) in the 1993 Fox comedy. dear dad and was a rabbi between 2002 and 2004 on The WB show. Seventh sky.

Lewis, however, was at his best as a fictional version of himself in Control your enthusiasm. He and David performed stand-up comedy from New York transplants now living in Los Angeles on the HBO comedy.

“We are heartbroken,” an HBO spokesperson shared in a statement. “His comedic brilliance, wit and talent were unmatched. Richard will always be a beloved member of HBO and Curb your enthusiasm families. Our deepest condolences to his family, his friends and all the fans who could count on Richard to brighten their days with laughter.”

David shared his own statement following the news of Lewis’ death, writing: “Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he has been like a brother to me. He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me cry and I will never forgive him for that.”

The jokes included making fun of Lewis’s past problems with substance abuse and his tendency to date beautiful women in search of “the one”, only for David to inadvertently destroy any chance of a relationship. (In real life, Lewis married in 2005.)

In “The End,” the final episode of CurbIn season five, Lewis needs a kidney transplant, and both David and manager Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) turn out to be a match. They both argue that the other should donate. After a life-changing moment, David decides to make the sacrifice, but the surgery goes wrong and David suffers life-threatening complications. Meanwhile, Lewis celebrates his new kidney by taking his latest girlfriend on vacation.

The fact that the two worked so well together was funny considering they were at odds when they were younger. Lewis liked to joke that David tried to strangle him using Lewis’ umbilical cord, and when they were teenagers, they attended the same summer sports camp and bumped into each other.

“I hated it,” Lewis said New Jersey monthly in a 2015 interview. “We became friends years later when we were young comedians in New York, but one night I noticed something. “There’s something about you I hate,” I told him. “Wait, you’re that Larry David from summer camp.” And he said, ‘You’re that Richard Lewis.’ “We almost came to blows.”

Richard Philip Lewis was born in Brooklyn on June 29, 1947. He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, where his father worked as a caterer. His mother acted in regional theater.

He did not remember his childhood fondly. “It was pretty bad. “I didn’t see my father much,” she said. “My dad was such a successful caterer that they hired him for my bar mitzvah and I had my party on a Tuesday. He talks about low self-esteem. My father died young and my sister and brother moved away when I was in high school. So it was my mother and I, and we didn’t get along very well. “She didn’t understand me.”

After graduating from Dwight Morrow High School in 1965, Lewis earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and communications from The Ohio State University and then began working writing advertising copy for an agency located above a pizzeria in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.

At night, Lewis wrote jokes and sold material to veteran New York comedian Morty Gunty and others. That encouraged Lewis to develop his own act, and the death of his father in 1971 prompted him to take the stage. Soon, he was performing at New York hotspots like The Improv and Pips Comedy Club. (Lewis credited David Brenner and Robert Klein for helping him hone his performance, and counted Jonathan Winters as a father figure.)

The Prince of Pain arrived at Johnny Carson’s house Tonight’s show in 1974 and gained strength with Diary of a young comedian, a 1979 NBC telefilm produced by Lorne Michaels in which he played a Jewish comedian who leaves New York to make a name for himself in Hollywood. When he doesn’t meet Lorne Greene right away, he orders a bacon, lettuce, and calcium sandwich at a health food store.

In 1982, Lewis first appeared in Late Night with David Lettermanand the host said I could come in whenever I wanted.

“The reason it was so important to me…wasn’t the material, it was my physique,” he said. said he Chicago Grandstand in 2018. “It was too much for the camera. I moved around… (Letterman) turned me into a younger version of Oscar Levant in (Jack Paar tonight’s show), just sitting there, writhing and screaming for help in front of him.”

His television specials included the 1985 ones. Concert ‘I’m in Pain’1988 The concert I’m exhausted and 1990 Richard Lewis: I am doomed.

Afraid of forgetting a funny idea, Lewis constantly jotted down possible snippets on a notepad. He would glue the pages together and use them as a road map for a night’s performance. (Lewis even took his recorded pages to Carnegie Hall.)

“I’m so crazy, I’m so obsessed with the show, but that’s who I am,” he said. saying during a 2007 interview with the New York Observer. “I am so connected to my time on stage that my head is full of images. It’s terrifying, but also exhilarating. I will never stop working like this.”

On the big screen, he teamed up with fellow stand-up stars Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer, Franklin Ajaye and Tim Thomerson in The wrong guys (1988), then took on a co-starring role in 1989 on the ABC romantic comedy. Everything but love.

Set in the offices of a Chicago magazine, Lewis played a veteran (and, yes, neurotic) columnist who found himself matching wits with a teacher-turned-writer (Jamie Lee Curtis). Although they try to keep their relationship professional, they can’t help but feel attracted to each other.

“I had been a comedian for a long time, but getting that big network in prime time was great,” Lewis said. remembered In a 2007 interview with tv guide. “Suddenly I was at a promotion in the middle of rosaanne, and before the end of the day, millions of people knew my face. It was just a completely different ballgame. That’s why it was very important to me that this series last.”

Everything but loveNever a ratings giant, it survived four seasons before being canceled in 1992. “It was actually historic, because we were canceled by our own studio (20th Century Fox, rather than the network),” he said Lewis. tv guide. “It was a surprise. “Jamie Lee and I drove to the soundstage, ready to read a new script on Monday morning, completely unaware that some higher-ups had decided we were done.”

In 1997, he starred alongside Kevin Nealon as Dumb TV Comedy Writers on the ABC series. Hiller and Diller (1997), but was canceled after 13 episodes, then played a college basketball coach in Game’s Day (1999).

Lewis also appeared as recurring characters on television shows. Rude awakening, ‘To death and frank talk (as a psychiatrist); guest star on the Larry Sanders show, Tales from the Crypt, Two and a half Men, Jorge Lopez and Everyone hates Chris; and appeared on the big screen in that’s appropriate (1987), once upon a time there was a crime (1992), wagons this (1994), drunk (nineteen ninety five), Leaving Vegas (nineteen ninety five), The elevator (nineteen ninety six), Hugo Pool (1997), vampires (2012) and She’s funny that way (2014).

He is survived by his wife, Joyce.

Jackie Strause and Christy Piña contributed to this report.