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Richard Lewis Was the Bleeding Heart of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’

Richard Lewis portrayed himself on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' Rolling Stone pays tribute to his final appearances and legacy.

After experiencing numerous health struggles — including a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in the spring of 2023 — Lewis died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 76, leaving behind a body of work that serves as a testament to the ability to alchemize vulnerability and suffering into neuroses-laden gold. The two were born in the same hospital three days apart and went to camp together as pre-teens, reconnecting on the stand-up circuit in the 1970s, and their lifelong bond was palpable onscreen, even as they bickered over outgoing voice machine messages, yogic mantras, and whether or not his signed Mickey Mantle ball was hidden in his nurse’s cavernous vagina. How dare you?” he says, retorting when David responds that he would have been sadder had it been a parrot or a macaw: “I don’t live in a Cuban dance hall.” Lewis devoted his career to documenting the myriad tragedies of life, aghast at a world that failed to acknowledge their enormity, and no self-described “prince of pain” has ever been funnier.

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