Michael Anthony Richards is an American actor, three-time Emmy Award winner, writer, producer, and comedian, best known for playing Cosmo Kramer on the television show Seinfeld, which ran from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, on NBC.
Michael Richards was born in Culver City, California, to William Richards, an electrical engineer, and Phyllis Nardozzi, a medical records librarian. Richards was brought up with no specific religious tradition. He attended the California Institute of the Arts but received a BA degree in drama from The Evergreen State College in 1975. He also had a short-lived Improv act with Ed Begley, Jr. during this period. Enrolled at Los Angeles Valley College, he continued to dominate student productions. He later said: "I am grateful that the public schools introduced me to the performing arts." He was drafted during the Vietnam War and stationed in Germany as one of the co-directors of the V Corps Training Road Show. He produced and directed shows dealing with race relations and drug abuse; "This was a successful, educational operation, boosting the morale of our men and incorporating the arts into the service." He then spent two years in the Army developing educational skits and a couple more years "finding himself" at a commune in the Santa Clara Mountains; he drove a bus and developed a stand-up comedy act in 1979.
Richards got his big TV break nine months later appearing in Billy Crystal's first cable TV special. In 1980, he began as one of the cast members on ABC's Fridays television show, including a famous instance in which guest Andy Kaufman refused to deliver his scripted lines, leading Richards to bring the cue cards on screen to Kaufman, before a small riot ensued (Richards later claimed he was in on the joke).[3] He was also famous for a sketch that he did on the show, during which he simply improvised with a large pile of dirt and some army toys. Richards had a guest starring role on NBC's Miami Vice as an unscrupulous bookie. He also had a guest role on Cheers as a character trying to collect on an old bet with Sam Malone. He made several guest appearances with Jay Leno as an accident-prone fitness expert, and gained a screen credit portraying "Stanley Spadowski" in "Weird Al" Yankovic's movie UHF in 1989. His famous improvisation skills can be witnessed in this movie. As is confirmed in the feature commentary and in the deleted scenes special feature on the UHF DVD, the scene where Stanley Spadowski was playing with the toy man he found in the box of Corn Flakes was completely improvised by Michael.
In the same year, he was cast as Cosmo Kramer (based on the real-life Kenny Kramer) in the NBC television series Seinfeld, which was created by fellow Fridays cast member Larry David and comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Although it got off to a slow start, by the mid-1990s, the show had become one of the most popular sitcoms in television history. The series ended its nine-year run in 1998 at #1 in the Nielsen Ratings. He also played himself in Episode 6 of Season 1 "The Flirt Episode" (1992) of the acclaimed HBO series, The Larry Sanders Show.
Richards also played a cameo role in So I Married an Axe Murderer where he was an "insensitive man," and had a supporting role as an escaped convict in the John Ritter movie Problem Child. He also made guest appearances on the popular sitcom Night Court.
In 2000, after the end of Seinfeld, Richards began work on a new series for NBC, his first major project since Seinfeld's high-profile finale. The Michael Richards Show was originally conceived as a comedy/mystery, with Richards playing a bumbling private eye, but the first pilot failed to fester with test audiences. NBC ordered that the show be retooled into a more conventional, office-based sitcom before its premiere. After a few weeks of poor ratings and negative reviews, it was cancelled.
The lead role in the series Monk was originally written for Richards,[4] but there was concern that audiences, used to seeing him do comedy, might not accept him in the role. [5] After being developed at ABC and then picked up by USA, the show was cast with Tony Shalhoub and became a critically acclaimed hit.
Starting in 2004, he and his fellow Seinfeld cast members have provided interviews and audio commentaries for the Seinfeld DVDs.
