Richard Lewis, Curb Your Enthusiasm star and stand-up comic, dies aged 76

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Richard Lewis, the acclaimed comic well-known for enjoying a fictionalised model of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm, has died. He was 76.

Lewis died after struggling a coronary heart assault at residence in Los Angeles on Tuesday night time (27 February). As Deadline experiences, his demise was confirmed by his publicist Jeff Abraham.

“His wife, Joyce Lapinsky, thanks everyone for all the love, friendship and support and asks for privacy at this time,” Abraham mentioned in an announcement.

Lewis introduced final yr that he had been identified with Parkinson’s illness and was retiring from stand-up comedy.

Nevertheless, he continued to seem within the twelfth season of Larry David’s sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is at present airing on HBO.

Lewis was born in Brooklyn on 29 June 1947. He first tried his hand at stand-up by collaborating in an open mic in Greenwich Village in 1971, and by the top of the last decade had established himself as one of many stand-out abilities of a flourishing stand-up scene that additionally included the likes of George Carlin, Andy Kaufman and Lily Tomlin.

Alongside his darkish stand-up comedy, marked by self-deprecation and gallows humour, Lewis was additionally a proficient actor who appeared in comedies similar to Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) in addition to extra critical dramas together with Leaving Las Vegas (1995).

In 1999, Lewis appeared within the pilot episode of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David’s sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm. When the sequence was picked up the next yr he grew to become a daily and beloved character on the present.

In 2020, Lewis spoke to The Independent about his lifelong relationship with David.

“I was born in the same hospital as Larry, three days apart,” Lewis defined. “We went to the same sports camp when we were 12, and I hated him and he hated me. I never wanted to see him again. He was just a lanky a**hole, and he considered me a chubby a**hole. So we never saw each other again until 12 years later when we were comedians in New York starting out.

“He was a big fan of mine, and there was something about his face that scared me. It was like something out of a Polanski movie. I’ve been sober about 26 years, but back then I wasn’t, and I must have put a few back after my set, and I looked at him and said: ‘There’s something about you that’s horrifying.’ And he gets real nervous about that s***. And we went through our childhoods and realised we went to the same camp. ‘You’re that kid?’ he said. ‘You’re Richard Lewis? You son of a bitch!’ He’s in denial about it, but I wanted to have a fight.”