Comedian, Curb your Enthusiasm star Richard Lewis dead at 76 | CBC News | Maqvi News

Acclaimed comedian Richard Lewis has died. He was 76.

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, said his publicist Jeff Abraham. He 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 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 fellow comedian Larry David in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, kvetching regularly.

“I’m paranoid about everything in my life,” he once joked onstage. “Even at home. On my stationary bike, I have a rear-view mirror, which I’m not thrilled about.” 

To late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel he 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.”

Comedy Central named Lewis one of the top 50 standup comedians of all time, and he earned a berth in GQ’s list of the “20th Century’s Most Influential Humorists.” He lent his humour for charity causes, including Comic Relief and Comedy Gives Back.

“Watching his standup is like sitting in on a very funny and often dark therapy session,” the Los Angeles Times said in 2014. The Philadelphia’s City Paper called him “the Jimi Hendrix of monologists.”