Richard Lewis, Larry David’s co-star in Curb Your Enthusiasm and a beloved standup comedian has died at the age of 76.
Lewis said last year that he had Parkinson’s disease and was stepping off the standup stage. Despite that partial retirement, he was in the currently airing Season 12 of the Curb Your Enthusiasm show on HBO.
Lewis died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles last night after suffering a heart attack, according to his publicist Jeff Abraham of Jonas Public Relations.
“His wife, Joyce Lapinsky, thanks everyone for all the love, friendship and support and asks for privacy at this time,” Abraham said in a statement.
“Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me,” David said in a statement shared by HBO. “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, the romantic co-lead opposite Lewis in the ABC series Anything But Love, paid tribute to him on Instagram, writing: “He also is the reason I am sober. He helped me. I am forever grateful for him for that act of grace alone. He found love with Joyce and that, of course, besides his sobriety, is what mattered most to him. I’m weeping as I write this. Strange way of saying thank you to a sweet and funny man. Rest in laughter, Richard.”
The acclaimed comedian was known for exploring his neuroses in frantic, stream-of-consciousness diatribes while dressed in all black, leading to his nickname The Prince of Pain.
A regular performer in clubs and on late-night TV for decades, Lewis also played the reliably neurotic Prince John in Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood: Men In Tights.
He reintroduced himself to a new generation opposite Larry David in 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 TV host and fellow comedian Jimmy Kimmel, Lewis 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.”
The Comedy Central channel named Lewis one of the top 50 standup comedians of all time and he earned a berth in GQ magazine’s list of the “20th Century’s Most Influential Humorists”. He also 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. 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 reporting
