Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor was an American stand-up comedian and actor born in Peoria, Illinois in 1940. He developed a style built on sharp, trenchant observation and personal storytelling that drew on his own difficult upbringing and lived experience, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential stand-up comedians in American history. His work reshaped the boundaries of stand-up comedy for the performers who followed him, and he also built a substantial film acting career alongside his stage work. Pryor won a Primetime Emmy Award and five Grammy Awards over his career, received the first Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 1998, and won a Writers Guild of America Award in 1974. He died in December 2005 at the age of 65.