NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV's most indelible detectives as John Munch in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: SVU,” has died. He was 78.
Belzer died Sunday at his home in Bozouls in southern France. Comedian Laraine Newman first announced his death on Twitter. The actor Henry Winkler, Belzer's cousin, wrote “Rest in peace Richard.”
For more than two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 episode of “Homicide” and last played him in 2016 on “Law & Order: SVU.”
“I would never be a detective. But if I were, that's how I'd be," Belzer once said. From that unlikely beginning, Belzer's Munch would become one of television's longest-running characters and a sunglasses-wearing presence on the small screen for more than two decades.
“He made me laugh a billion times,” his longtime friend and fellow stand-up Richard Lewis said on Twitter.
After being expelled from Dean Junior College in Massachusetts, Belzer embarked on a life of stand-up in New York in 1972. At Catch a Rising Star, Belzer became a regular. He made his big-screen debut in Ken Shapiro's 1974 film “The Groove Tube," a TV satire co-starring Chevy Chase, a film that grew out of the comedy group Channel One that Belzer was a part of.
Before “Saturday Night Live" changed the comedy scene in New York, Belzer performed with John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray.