Comedian Richard Lewis, who starred in Curb Your Enthusiasm, dies at 76

Renowned comedian Richard Lewis, known for exploring his neuroses in stream-of-consciousness diatribes, has died. The comedian, always dressed in all-black, had earned the nickname of 'The Prince of Pain' due to his work and style of comedy.

Lewis, who revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2023, died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday night after suffering a heart attack, according to his publicist Jeff Abraham. He was 76.

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.

“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,” Larry David said in a statement. “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.”

Comedy Central named Lewis one of the top 50 stand-up comedians of all time and he earned a spot in GQ magazine’s list of the 20th Century’s Most Influential Humorists.

He lent his humour to charity causes, including Comic Relief and Comedy Gives Back.

Comedians pay tribute

Comedians took to social media Wednesday to share their thoughts, including Albert Books who called Lewis “a brilliantly funny man who will missed by all. The world needed him now more than ever” on X, formerly Twitter.

Other tributes came fromMichael McKean and Paul Feig, who called Lewis “one of the funniest people on the planet.”

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Richard Lewis' life

Following his graduation from Ohio State University in 1969, the New York-born Lewis began a stand-up career, honing his craft on the circuit with other contemporaries like Jay Leno, Freddie Prinze and Billy Crystal who were also just starting like Lewis.

He recalled Rodney Dangerfield hiring him for $75 to fill in at his New York club, Dangerfield’s. “I had a lot of great friends early on who believed in me, and I met pretty iconic people who helped me, and told me to keep working on my material. And I never looked back,” he told The Gazette of Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2010.

“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.

In 1989 at Carnegie Hall, he appeared with six feet of yellow legal sheets filled with material and taped together for a 2½-hour set that led to two standing ovations. The night was “the highlight of my career,” he told The Washington Post in 2020.

Lewis told GQ his signature look came incidentally, saying his obsession with dressing in black came from watching the television Western Have Gun – Will Travel,with a cowboy in all-black, when he was a kid. He also popularized the term “from hell” — as in “the date from hell” or “the job from hell.”

“That just came out of my brain one day and I kept repeating it a lot for some reason. Same thing with the black clothes. I just felt really comfortable from the early ’80s on and I never wore anything else. I never looked back.”

After getting sober from drugs and alcohol in 1994, Lewis put out his 2008 memoir, The Other Great Depression— a collection of fearless, essay-style riffs on his life — and Reflections from Hell.

(With inputs from agencies)