Richard Lewis, comedian known for neurotic act, at 76
Richard Lewis, the stand-up comedian who first achieved fame in the 1970s and ’80s with his trademark acerbic, dark sense of humor, and who later parlayed that quality into an acting career that included movies like “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and a recurring role as himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 76.
His publicist, Jeff Abraham, said the cause was a heart attack. Mr. Lewis announced last year that he had Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Lewis was among the best-known names in a generation of comedians who came of age during the 1970s and ’80s, marked by a world-weary, sarcastic wit that mapped well onto the urban malaise in which many of them plied their trade.
After finding success as a comedian in New York nightclubs, he became a regular on latenight talk shows, favored as much for his tight routine as for his casual, open affability as an interviewee. He appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman” 48 times.
And he was at the forefront of the boom in stand-up comedy that came with the expansion of cable television in the late 1980s.
Neurotic and self-deprecating, typically dressed all in black, Mr. Lewis paced the stages of comedy clubs, hanging his head, pulling at his shock of black hair, riffing on his struggles in life and love. He called himself the “Prince of Pain” and so did his legions of fans.
He came by his art naturally — there was no faking his misery — but also through astute attention to the anxiety-inducing and neurosis-triggering details of everyday life.
“I’m such a madman — I’m so obsessed about the show, but that’s who I am,” he told The New York Observer in 2007. “I’m just so wired by my time onstage, my head is filled with images. It’s terrifying, but it’s also exhilarating. I’ll never not work like this.”
But it wasn’t an act. Part of Mr. Lewis’s appeal was his willingness to poke into his wounds, drawing on his unhappy childhood, his unhappy dating life, and his everyday bouts of gaping self-doubt.
If it caused him pain to be so open — and it clearly did — it also fueled his success. He was among the best-known standup comedians of the late 1980s. He played a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1989, receiving two standing ovations for 2 1/2 hours of material.
“He didn’t assume a character when he walked up onstage,” Billy Crystal, who came up with Mr. Lewis on the New York comedy scene in the 1970s, said in an interview Wednesday. “He just kind of dragged himself up there. It was refreshing. Sometimes you could see audiences just want to say, ‘Slow down. It’s going to be OK.’”
Mr. Lewis soon moved into acting. He starred as Marty Gold on the sitcom “Anything but Love,” opposite Jamie Lee Curtis, from 1989 to 1992. The show won him acclaim and seemed to signal a move to Hollywood stardom.
But his follow-up show, “Daddy Dearest,” on which he played the son of his fellow comic Don Rickles, was a bomb, and Mr. Lewis spent the next several years seeking out bit parts in movies and single-episode roles on TV.
He had a prominent role in Mel Brooks’ comedy “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” (1993), but otherwise he had to settle for small roles in films like “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995) and “Hugo Pool” (1997).
After two years of struggling to get acting roles, he returned to stand-up, traveling the country with his show “Richard Lewis: The Magical Misery Tour,” which was seen as an HBO special in 1996. It brought him new attention from a new generation of comedy fans and a new shot at bit parts in television.
Many of his best TV roles were on shows that shared his dark-tinged, humorous take on the world, like the animated series “The Simpsons” and “BoJack Horseman.”
Mr. Lewis was open about his struggles with alcohol, drugs, and depression. He became sober in the mid-1990s and wrote about his experience in his 2000 memoir, “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.”
He revised the book, with a new foreword, and republished it in 2008. He also wrote “Reflections From Hell: Richard Lewis’ Guide on How Not to Live” (2015).
Beginning in 1999, he had a regular role on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” as a good friend and golf buddy of Larry David, the show’s star and creator. He played a semi-fictionalized version of himself, a dour Eeyore who made David’s otherwise prickly self seem like Christopher Robin.
Mr. Lewis did not appear in every episode, but he appeared regularly, including in the current season, the show’s last.
Richard Philip Lewis was born June 29, 1947, in New York’s Brooklyn borough, in the same hospital as his friend and future co-star, David, and just three days before him. His family soon moved to Englewood, N.J. His father, Bill Lewis, owned a kosher catering business, and his mother, Blanche (Goldberg) Lewis, acted in community theater, specializing in the Jewish mother characters in Neil Simon plays.
As Mr. Lewis often related in his stand-up act, his family life was troubled. His father was never home and died when Mr. Lewis was still young. His mother was emotionally distant, with issues of her own.
“I owe my career to my mother,” he told The Washington Post in 2020. “I should have given her my agent’s commission.”
He attended Ohio State University and, after graduating with a degree in marketing, returned to New Jersey. While trying his hand at comedy at night and writing material for other comedians on the side, he worked day jobs as an advertising copywriter and a clerk at a sporting goods store.
As his career took off, Mr. Lewis moved to Los Angeles, although he returned to his hometown frequently.
He lived alone in a sprawling house above the Sunset Strip and remained proudly averse to long-term relationships until he met Joyce Lapinsky, who worked in music publishing. They dated for several years before Mr. Lewis, considering marriage, brought her to his psychiatrist. “This is as good as it gets,” he often recalled the therapist saying.
They married in 2005. He leaves her, along with his brother, Robert.