Jamie Lee Curtis credits late costar Richard Lewis with her sobriety: 'I am forever grateful'

The two worked together on the '90s sitcom "Anything but Love."

Comedian and actor Richard Lewis died Tuesday at 76, but his legacy lives on in the lives he touched, including that of his friend and castmate Jamie Lee Curtis.

In an emotional Instagram post Wednesday, Curtis paid tribute to her late Anything but Love costar and credited Lewis with her sobriety.

"Richard's last text to me, was hoping that I could convince ABC/Disney to put out another boxed set of episodes of the show," Curtis wrote. "He also is the reason I am sober. He helped me. I am forever grateful for him for that act of grace alone. He found love with Joyce and that, of course, besides his sobriety, is what mattered most to him."

Curtis, 65, has been open about her addiction to opiates in the past, and recently celebrated 25 years of sobriety. Lewis was vocal about his own addiction — he frequently confronted his alcoholism and substance abuse in his standup routines, and reflected on his sobriety journey in his memoir The Other Great Depression. Lewis said he got sober in August 1994, after a near-death experience that landed him in the hospital.

Elsewhere in her tribute post, Curtis detailed how she first became acquainted with the comedian. "I remember exactly where I was when I saw a billboard of him about a stand up special on Sunset Boulevard when we were casting the ABC pilot Anything but Love and asked the casting people to bring him in to audition to play my best friend/maybe boyfriend, Marty Gold," she recalled. "I thought he was handsome. He made me laugh, which is the one thing that a strong, capable woman, can't really do for herself. He got the part when I snort laughed when he mispronounced the word Bundt cake."

Curtis also wrote that despite his initial disdain for acting, Lewis was a gifted performer. "He was also a stand-up comic and hated the live audience, where I, who had never done a play, loved it," she said. "He used to hide his lines everywhere on the set, on props, door frames, on my face in a close up and was always carrying a clipboard with his lines on them. It turns out he was a wonderful actor. Deep and so freaking funny."

She concluded, "I'm weeping as I write this. Strange way of saying thank you to a sweet and funny man. Rest in laughter, Richard. My Marty, I love you, Hannah!"

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