Richard Pryor

About

One of the great comedic performers of the 20th Century, Richard Pryor was an influential actor, writer and stand-up comedian. He endured a tough childhood in Illinois, growing up living in a brothel where his mother worked. After dropping out of school at the age of 14, he turned to performing, originally surviving as a night club drummer. A move to New York City in the early 1960s planted the seeds for a soon to explode comedy career that would make Pryor a legend of the screen and the stage. His stand-up work was crude and fearless, often tackling hot-button racial topics of the day with sharp witticism and scathing satire. Beginning in 1967, he began a movie career that would eventually lead to roles in over 50 films, including his much beloved comedies with Gene Wilder in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Silver Streak, Stir Crazy and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Pryor battled drug and alcohol addiction at various times for most of his career, and although he had cleaned up later in life, he died of a heart attack in 2005 at the relatively young of 65.