rip Updated Feb. 28, 2024
By Hershal Pandya, a Vulture personnel author who covers funny
Picture: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
Richard Lewis, the pioneering comic understood for mining the depths of his neuroses in his stand-up and for his repeating function as a fictionalized variation of himself on HBO’s Suppress Your Enthusiasmpassed away of a cardiac arrest in his Los Angeles home on February 27, Vulture has actually verified. He was 76.
Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Lewis started his profession as a funnyman in the 1970s and rapidly acquired a credibility as a comic who pressed the borders of the kind by talking freely about his battles with psychological health and dependency onstage. He made his very first look as a star in the 1979 made-for-TV NBC motion picture Journal of a Young Comic and ended up being a component on the late-night talk-show circuit in the 1980s and 1990s, appearing regularly on The Tonight Show and Late Night With David LettermanLewis launched 4 well-known stand-up specials: Showtime’s I’m in Pain (1985) and I’m Exhausted (1988) I’m Doomed (1990 ), and The Magical Misery Tour (1997) all on HBO. His achieved acting profession was headlined by his look as Prince John in 1993’s Robin Hood: Men in Tightshis starring function in the comedy Anything But Love together with Jamie Lee Curtis, and, naturally, his scene-stealing looks on Suppresswhich is presently airing its 12th and last season on HBO.
In April 2023, Lewis published an upgrade on social networks in which he revealed that he ‘d been detected with Parkinson’s illness which, in 2019, he ‘d retired from stand-up after practically 50 years to concentrate on his health, composing, and acting. That very same year, he released a podcast entitled Richard Lewis: Alive and Unwellthe last episode of which was published in December 2023 and included an assisted trip of his home. Lewis is made it through by his amazing body of work and his spouse, Joyce Lapinsky.
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