Sam Amico
Richard Lewis, noted for his stand-up work whose fame rose to another level as a sidekick in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, has died after suffering a heart attack. He was 76.
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Lewis passed away at his home in Los Angeles, per multiple reports. He had been living with Parkinson’s for several years.
“His wife, Joyce Lapinsky, thanks everyone for all the love, friendship and support and asks for privacy at this time,” publicist Jeff Abraham said, via Deadline.
The outlet went on to describe Lewis as “self-deprecating, razor-sharp and brutally honest about his addictions and neurosis, Lewis was the rare comic who could rival the curmudgeonly but highly relatable outlook on life honed by his longtime pal and Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Larry David.”
Lewis announced his battle with Parkinson’s about a year ago.
“Luckily I got it late in life, and they say you progress very slowly if at all and I’m on the right meds and it’s cool,” he said at the time, via the Daily Mail. “I just wanted you to know that that’s where it’s been at.
“I’m finished with standup, I’m just focusing on writing and acting. I have Parkinson’s disease but I’m under a doctor’s care and everything is cool and I love my wife, I love my little puppy dog and I love all of my friends and my fans.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter:
Lewis paced nervously during his stand-up act, running his fingers through his hair and waving his arms with exasperation. He had a long problem with substance abuse, and he confessed to being high the night he performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1989. He said he had trouble remembering the standing ovations he received or anything else that happened during the 2 1/2-hour show, which he considered the apex of his career.
In 1991, after he mixed alcohol and drugs, he was rushed to the hospital, and the experience shocked him into sobriety. He would chronicle his recovery in his 2002 autobiography, The Other Great Depression: How I’m Overcoming, on a Daily Basis, at Least a Million Addictions and Dysfunctions and Finding a Spiritual (Sometimes) Life.
As an actor, Lewis also portrayed Prince John for Mel Brooks in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), played the psychologist son of a used car dealer (Don Rickles) on the 1993 Fox sitcom Dadd—y Dearest and was a rabbi from 2002-04 on The WB’s 7th Heaven.
