Richard Lewis

Lewis married his long-term girlfriend and ‘soulmate’ Joyce Lapinsky in 2005. When he decided to get married to Lapinsky, he took her to meet with his therapist for his opinion on her.

Richard Lewis was born in Brooklyn, New York City, in a middle-class household; his father was a caterer and mother was a small-time actress.

He studied marketing and communications from the Ohio State University and later started working as a librarian in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art.

Lewis realized his talent for acting and knack for comedy and decided to pursue comedy professionally. This realization came to him at the time when he was successfully contributing ad copy and comedic material to other comedians.

His very first professional comic stint was with New York’s Improvisation Comedy Club in the early 1970s and by 1974 he managed to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which meant that his talent was no longer hidden.

Lewis started making regular appearances on The Sonny and Cher Show. It was around this time he earned the nickname ‘The Prince of Pain’ because of his TV guise of an angry and grumpy person.

Lewis did many little stints for shows like Saturday Night Live, made numerous television appearances and toured along with other comics on—especially the comic concert with Jamie Lee Curtis, which earned him his own cable special ‘I’m in Pain’.

He acted with Don Rickles in the short-lived TV series ‘Daddy Dearest’. He had a recurring role in ‘Rude Awakening’, as ‘Rabbi Richard Glass’ on the dramatic series ‘7th Heaven’, and appeared on the ‘Tales from the Crypt’.

Although Lewis is a multi-faceted personality with a record in stage performances, TV and film acting and writing but his forte is his unique comic routines, which he incorporated in various TV series and movies.