Actor/Comic Bernie Mac, 50, Dies

Actor/comedian Bernie Mac died Saturday morning in a Chicago area hospital from complications due to pneumonia.

The performer, who began his career as a standup at age 19 and ascended via bit parts to have a place as part of the comic ensemble in Charlie's Angels, as well as in the high-grossing Oceans' Eleven and its two sequels.  (Co-star George Clooney said in a statement, "The world just got a little less funny. He will be dearly missed."  Other tributes poured in.)

His breakthrough performance on the big screen came as one of four performers in Spike Lee's The Original Kings of Comedy, a surprise 2001 hit that reminded Hollywood of an urban audience to which they hadn't paid proper heed.

That success helped lead, in 2001, to the comic guise for which the public perhaps knew him best , on the successful and acclaimed The Bernie Mac Show on Fox.

Proceeding from a successful Original Kings of Comedy bit about his real-life experiences, he played the husband in a couple who become guardians of his sisters' three children. Mac kept enough edge to induce Washington Post television critic Tom Shales to say the show, "turns the family sitcom on its head and sets it spinning".

A role in 2007's Pride indicated the direction Mac declared he wanted to go--away from stand-up and comic roles and towards more depth. In an appearance last year with David Letterman on CBS' Late Show he said he viewed his documentary The Whole Truth, Nothing But the Truth, So Help Me Mac (for which a release date is not set) as the finale of his stand-up career.  He also has a role opposite Sam Jackson in the Dimension comedy Soul Men, coming in November.

In a history that often edged into controversy, Mac made waves when his ten-minute stand-up routine at a July fundraiser for Barack Obama offended some vocal audience members and brought a brief chiding from the candidate.

Though he had suffered from his previous diagnosis of a chronic tissue inflammation, called sarcoidosis, which has been in remission since 2005, that malady was originally said to be unrelated to his recent bout of pneumonia--and he'd has reported on Thursday to be in stable condition.

Born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough on Oct. 5, 1957, in Chicago, he wrote in his two books of knowing lean times growing up on the city's South Side, living with his mother, who died of cancer when he was 16, and grandparents.

He is survived by his wife of many years, Rhonda, and daughter Je'Niece.
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In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey, she asked Mac why he'd abandon the stand-up roots that made him a star.

"I'm not a star," he said with a shrug. "Stars fall."