Jamie Lee Curtis recently marked a quarter-century of sobriety, sharing a photo of herself with a commemorative token for the milestone on her Instagram in early February. This week, shortly after his death, she attributed the beginning of that 25-year journey to her friend, comedian Richard Lewis.
In a series of Instagram posts on Wednesday, Curtis mourned her friend and Anything But Love co-star. “He also is the reason I am sober,” she wrote in one caption. “He helped me. I am forever grateful for him for that act of grace alone.”
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“I’m weeping as I write this,” she continued. “Strange way of saying thank you to a sweet and funny man. Rest in laughter, Richard.”
Curtis reminisced about how Lewis came to star alongside her on Anything But Love’s four-season run on ABC from 1989 to 1992.
“He made me laugh, which is the one thing that a strong, capable woman can’t really do for herself,” she wrote. “He got the part when I snort laughed when he mispronounced the word Bundt cake.”
In another post on the same day, she again thanked Lewis for his part in her sobriety.
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“Richard Lewis helped people laugh and he helped people heal through his tireless, indefatigable belief in sobriety,” she wrote alongside a red carpet photo of the two. “The laughs may stop but the healing never does. It’s the power of recovery and fellowship and solidarity and it’s available everywhere all at once. A phone call away. Rest in the knowledge that you helped people, Richard. First of all, me.”
Since first disclosing her sobriety in an interview two years in, the actor has not shied away from discussing the topic. She said in one interview that she sees sobriety as her “legacy,” and while answering Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire in 2022, said that her greatest achievement is “my sobriety,” while “the lowest depth of misery” is “February 2, 1999, when I realized I would die from opiate addiction.” In February 2023, speaking to Vanity Fair after her Oscar nomination for her work in Everything Everywhere All At Once (a category she would go on to win), Curtis said of the awards season hubbub, “I’m sober 24 years and I live in reality and I have my feet on the ground, and there’s a phrase in recovery that I like to say, which is, ‘Be where your feet are.’ Therefore I need to ground myself in reality.”
Lewis died Wednesday at the age of 76 of a heart attack. In April 2023, he revealed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.
In one of his last interviews, a conversation published in February by Vanity Fair, Lewis discussed his decision to share the diagnosis, and how he hoped being open about his own life and health, from his addiction history and other battles, could help others.
“I thought for what it’s worth, I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic in recovery almost 30 years. That helped some people,” he said. “Maybe I could go public on this and they’ll say, ‘Gee, I didn’t know Lewis had this!’ And maybe it’ll give them some encouragement.”
“I’m hopeful that this doesn’t define me. I’m a recovered drunk who happens to have Parkinson’s, but I’m a comedian and an actor and an author and a writer. So I just own it and I wear it that way. Of course when I finish this interview, I’ll break down and cry and start screaming. But why show you everything?”
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