Richard Simmons, a fitness guru who mixed laughter and sweat, dies at 76

NEW YORK — Richard Simmons, the hyperactive television fitness jester who built a mini-empire with his trademark tank tops and short shorts encouraging obese people to exercise and eat better, died on Saturday. He turned 76 on Friday.

Simmons died at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Tom Estey said in an email to The Associated Press. He did not give further details.

Los Angeles police and firefighters say they responded to a home — whose address the AP matched with Simmons through public records — where a man was pronounced dead of natural causes.

Simmons, who revealed a skin diagnosis in March 2024, had recently gone missing, sparking speculation about her health and well-being. Her death was first reported by TMZ.

Simmons was a 600-pound former teenager who became a master of many forms of media, sharing his hard-earned weight-loss tips as the Emmy-winning host of the daytime “Richard Simmons Show” and author of best-selling books. sellers and the diet plan. Deal-A-Meal. He also opened exercise studios and starred in exercise videos, including the wildly successful line “Sweatin’ to the Oldies,” which became a cultural phenomenon.

“My eating plan and diet are just two words – common sense. With a dash of good humor,” he told the Associated Press in 1982. “I want to help people and make the world a healthier, happier place.”

Simmons embraced mass communication to get his message across, even as he ended up becoming the butt of jokes for his flamboyant clothes and talent. He was a sought-after guest on TV shows fronted by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Phil Donahue. But David Letterman played a trick on him and Howard Stern teased him until he cried. He was mocked in Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl” on Broadway in 1993, and Eddie Murphy put on white makeup and dressed like him in “The Nutty Professor,” shouting “I’m a pony!”

Asked if he thought he could motivate people by being silly, Simmons responded, “I think there’s a time to be serious and a time to be silly. It’s knowing when to do it. I try to have a good mix. Being silly cures depression. It sticks.” people off guard and makes them think. But in the midst of this nonsense there is a lot of seriousness that makes sense.

Simmons’ daytime program was seen on 200 stations in America, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan and South America. His first book, “Never Say Diet,” was a bestseller.

He was known for counseling severely obese people, including Rosalie Bradford, who held the record for being the heaviest woman in the world, and Michael Hebranko, who credited Simmons with helping him lose 300 pounds. Simmons put real people—chubby, bald, or non-telegenic—in his workout videos to make fitness goals seem achievable.

Throughout his career, Simmons has been a reliable critic of fad diets, always emphasizing healthy eating and exercise plans. “There will always be something strange about eating four grapes before going to bed, or drinking a special tea, or buying this little bean from El Salvador,” he told the AP in 2005, as the Atkins diet craze swept the country. “If you watch your portions, have a good attitude, and work out every day, you will live longer, feel better, and look great.”

Simmons was a native of New Orleans, a chubby boy named Milton by his parents. (He renamed himself “Richard” at around age 10 to improve his self-image). He told people that he ate excessively because he believed his parents liked his older brother more. He was teased by schoolmates and grew to nearly 200 pounds.

Simmons told the AP that his mother religiously watched exercise guru Jack LaLanne’s TV show when he was a kid, but he wasn’t crazy about fitness fanatics. “I hated him,” Simmons said. “I wasn’t ready for his message because he was fit and healthy and had a very positive attitude, and I wasn’t any of those things.”

Simmons went to Italy as an exchange student and ended up doing peanut butter commercials and bacchanalia scenes for director Federico Fellini in his film “Fellini Satyricon.” He told the AP: “I was fat, I had curly hair. The Italians thought I was hysterical. I was the life of the party.”

His life changed after receiving an anonymous letter. “One dark, rainy day, I went to my car and found a note. It said, ‘Dear Richard, you are very funny, but fat people die young. Please don’t die.’ He was so stunned that he began a starvation diet that left him thin but very sick.

After the crash diet, he gained back 65 kilos. Eventually, he was able to come up with a sensible plan to lose weight and keep it off. “I got into the business because I couldn’t find anything I liked,” he said.

When Simmons had not been seen in public for several years, some media outlets speculated that he was being held hostage in his own home. In phone interviews with “Entertainment Tonight” and the “Today” show, Simmons refuted the claims and told fans that he was enjoying the time alone. Filmmaker and writer Dan Taberski, one of his regular students, launched a podcast in 2017 called “Missing Richard Simmons.”

In 2022, Simmons broke her six-year silence, with her spokesperson telling The New York Post that the beloved fitness icon was “living the life she chose.”

___Mark Kennedy is in http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio and Andrew Dalton contributed from Los Angeles.