Richard Lewis

Lewis was a stand-up first and always. He came up through the clubs and the late-night couches in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Letterman guest spots listed here are part of that record. The act was confession as comedy, anxiety and self-loathing and every neurosis he could name before the audience got there, delivered at a speed that made the misery funny.

Television turned that into a sitcom. He played Marty Gold on Anything But Love from 1989 to 1992. Film gave him Prince John in Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993, petulance at full volume inside a Mel Brooks parody, and two years later Peter in Leaving Las Vegas, a small part in a very dark picture and proof that the persona could work with the jokes taken out.

The lasting one is Curb Your Enthusiasm. From 2000 he appeared as a version of himself, feuding with Larry David over grievances too petty to survive daylight, and he kept at it until the series finished in 2024, the year he died. Around it sit the usual comedian's credits: Once Upon a Crime, Wagons East!, The Wrong Guys, Hugo Pool, Vamps, She's Funny That Way, plus a run of documentary talking-head work, Misery Loves Comedy and The Great Buster among them, where he is reliably the bleakest and funniest voice in the cut.