FILE PHOTO: Richard Simmons arrives at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards in New York on August 25, 2013. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Simmons, the animated TV fitness clown who built a mini-empire in his trademark tank tops and shorts by encouraging overweight people to exercise and eat healthily, died Saturday. He would have turned 76 on Friday.
Simmons died at his home in Los Angeles, publicist Tom Esty said in an email to The Associated Press. Esty declined to provide further details.
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Los Angeles police and fire departments said they responded to a home that The Associated Press found matched to Simmons’ address in public records, where they found a man pronounced dead of natural causes.
Simmons, who publicly announced his diagnosis with a skin condition in March 2024, had been out of sight in recent days, sparking speculation about his health. His death was first reported by TMZ.
Simmons, a teenager who once weighed 268 pounds, has become a multimedia guru, sharing his hard-earned weight-loss secrets as host of the Emmy Award-winning daytime show “The Richard Simmons Show,” authoring a best-selling book and diet plan, “Deal-a-Meal,” opening an exercise studio, starring in exercise videos like the smash hit “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” series, and becoming a cultural phenomenon.
“My meal plan and my diet are just two words: common sense, with a little humor thrown in,” he told The Associated Press in 1982. “I want to help people and make the world a healthier, happier place.”
Simmons used the press to spread his message, but eventually his costumes and flamboyant flair made him a laughing stock. He was a popular guest on TV shows led by Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Phil Donahue. But David Letterman played pranks on him, and Howard Stern mocked him until he cried. In 1993, Simmons was mocked on Broadway in Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl,” and in “The Nutty Professor,” Eddie Murphy dressed up like Simmons in white make-up and shouted, “I’m a pony!”
When asked if he thinks antics can motivate people, Simmons replied, “I think there’s a time to be serious and a time to be silly. It’s about knowing when to do it. I try to have a good mix. Antics cure depression. They surprise people, they make them think. But in between the antics there’s a lot of meaningful seriousness. It’s a different kind of training.”
Simmons’ daytime show aired on 200 stations across the United States, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan and South America. His first book, “Never Say Diet,” became a huge bestseller.
Simmons is known for counseling extremely obese people, including Rosalie Bradford, the world’s heaviest woman, and Michael Hebranko, who says he helped her lose 700 pounds. Simmons used real people — overweight, balding, and unattractive — in her exercise videos to make fitness goals seem achievable.
Throughout his career, Simmons has been a reliable critic of fad diets and has always emphasized healthy eating and exercise plans. “It’s always been weird stuff like eating four grapes before you go to bed or drinking special tea or buying these little beans from El Salvador,” he told The Associated Press in 2005, as the Atkins diet was sweeping the nation. “If you watch what you eat, have good posture and exercise every day, you’re going to live longer, feel better and look your best.”
Simmons was a chubby boy born in New Orleans whose parents named him Milton. (He changed his name to “Richard” when he was about 10 to improve his image.) He used to tell people he was overeating because he believed his parents favored his older brother. He was teased by his friends at school, and his weight ballooned to nearly 200 pounds.
Simmons told The Associated Press that when she was a child, her mother was an avid watcher of exercise guru Jack LaLane’s TV show, but she wasn’t crazy about the fitness freakout. “I didn’t like him,” Simmons said. “He was fit and healthy and had a really positive attitude, and I was none of those things, so I wasn’t ready for his message.”
Simmons went to Italy as an exchange student and appeared in peanut butter commercials and booze-soaked dining scenes in Federico Fellini’s film “Satyricon.” “I was fat, I had curly hair. The Italians thought I was hysterical. I was the life of the party,” he told The Associated Press.
His life changed after he received an anonymous letter: “One dark, rainy day, I went to my car and found a note there. It said, ‘Dear Richard, you’re a very interesting person. But fat people die early. Please don’t die.'” He was so shocked that he started a fasting diet. As a result, he lost weight, but became seriously ill.
After the crash diet, he gained 65 pounds back. Eventually, he was able to devise a smart plan to lose the weight and keep it off. “I started this business because I couldn’t find anything I liked,” he said.
After Simmons had not been seen in public for several years, some media outlets speculated that he was being held hostage in his home. In phone interviews with Entertainment Tonight and the Today Show, Simmons denied the allegations and told fans that he was enjoying his time alone. One of his regular students, filmmaker and author Dan Taberski, started a podcast called Missing Richard Simmons in 2017.
In 2022, Simmons broke her six-year silence, with a spokesperson telling the New York Post that the beloved fitness icon is “living the life she chooses.”
Associated Press writers Stephanie Dazio and Andrew Dalton contributed from Los Angeles.
