Facts about Michael Richards
Michael Richards Biography
Michael Richards spent nine seasons playing wacky neighbor Cosmo Kramer on the sitcom Seinfeld from 1989 to 1998.
Richards worked the clubs of L.A. as a stand-up comedian before landing a job on ABC’s late night comedy show Fridays (1980-82).
He hit the jackpot seven years later when he began playing Kramer, the lanky, eccentric, wild-haired Manhattan neighbor of Jerry Seinfeld on Seinfeld. Richards’ extreme physical comedy was a potent counterweight to the general talkiness of show, and the role made him a star.
The show’s success led to film roles, including UHF (1993, with Weird Al Yankovic), Coneheads (1993, with Dan Aykroyd), and Unstrung Heroes (1995, directed by Diane Keaton).
Richards returned to stand-up comedy in the 2000s, but in an incident in a club in 2006 he spewed racial epithets at hecklers during an appearance and the video went viral; he apologized on the David Letterman show a few days later, and has since spoofed himself because of it, but it sent his comedy career into a nosedive.
Extra credit
Richards made news in November of 2006 when he spewed racial epithets at hecklers during a comedy club appearance at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood; he apologized on the David Letterman show a few days later… Richards is six feet, two and one-half inches tall, according to a 1993 article in Entertainment Weekly… Richards’s co-stars on Seinfeld were Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine Benes and Jason Alexander as George Costanza… Some sources list 1948 as Richards’s birth year. Who2 bases its 1949 date on Kathleen Tracy’s book Jerry Seinfeld: The Whole Domain (1998, Birch Lane Press, p. 67).