Chris Farley, A Lovable Loser, Is Found Dead Actor Was Large, Loud And Seemingly Completely Without Vanity

Chris Farley, the king-sized comic who made a career of playing sweaty, frantic, but ultimately lovable losers, was found dead in a Chicago apartment Thursday. The cause of death was not immediately known. Farley was 33.

Police said Farley’s brother John called 911 after finding his brother in his 60th-floor apartment in the 100-story John Hancock Building on a stretch of Michigan Avenue known as the Magnificent Mile. There was no sign of foul play.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said Farley’s body, clad in pajama bottoms, was found on the floor in the entranceway to the apartment. An autopsy was planned for Friday.

Farley grew up in Wisconsin, went to Marquette University, then joined Second City, the renowned Chicago improvisational troupe that’s sent many of its alumni on to fame, fortune, and “Saturday Night Live” - most notably, John Belushi, whom Farley idolized and who also died at 33.

“He was one of my best friends and one of the funniest guys I’ve ever known,” said former “SNL” comic Chris Rock, who joined the show in 1990, the same year Farley did. “I love him and I’m going to miss him.”

On “SNL” - a show he was forbidden to watch as a child - Farley played memorable characters in some of the show’s bleakest years - in-your-face, top-volume vulgarians who’d gladly crash into a wall, or go shirtless.

He played a would-be Chippendale dancer who let it all hang out - and out, and out - in a Spandex-clad, flab-jiggling audition.

He was Matt Foley, polyester-wearing motivational speaker, whose fire-breathing, foaming exhortations somehow failed to improve his station - Foley “lived in a van, down by the river.”

He was Todd O’Conner, Super Fan, pledging eternal loyalty to Da Bears and Da Bulls, in between mouthfuls of bratwurst and buckets of beer.

He played Newt Gingrich and Mama Cass, General Norman Schwarzkopf and Cindy, the Gap Girl. He was large, loud, and seemingly completely without vanity - a guy who’d haul up his rugby shirt and bang on his belly to the tune of “The Little Drummer Boy,” if it was good for a laugh.

Al Franken, another “SNL” colleague, said of Farley on Los Angeles’ KCAL-TV: “There was a vulnerability spiced with genius; a real talent. I wish there was another 50 years of that. The man was a sweetheart.”

In 1992, Farley made his movie debut in “Wayne’s World,” starring “SNL” alums Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey. Farley played a security guard - a small part, but a start.

By 1993, he was Connie Conehead’s witless boyfriend in “The Coneheads,” and by 1995, the year he left “Saturday Night Live,” he was starring in “Tommy Boy,” the first in a series of buddy movies he made with another “SNL”er, the coolly acerbic David Spade. “Tommy Boy” was followed by “Black Sheep” in 1996 and “Beverly Hills Ninja” in 1997. The titles and situations changed, but the Farley character was generally the same - sweet, dim-witted, physically out of control, a walking punch line with a heart of gold.

But his penchant for eating, drinking and partying hard had his friends worried.

In a recent interview with Steppin’ Out magazine, Farley’s frequent co-star Spade said he was concerned for the 290-pound, size-54 comic.

“I mean, the fact that he cut out drugs and alcohol is the biggest thing,” Spade said. “But he’s my friend and I’m just concerned. … He needs to watch his weight, he drinks too much coffee, he smokes.”

In an Us magazine article this year titled “Chris Farley: On the Edge of Disaster,” Farley’s manager Marc Gurvitz said he was worried about the comic, even though he felt his long battle with booze and drugs was under control.

“He’s got a big career and a great life ahead of him,” Gurvitz told the magazine. “But will he go the route of John Candy if he’s not careful? Of course he will.” Candy died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 43.

Farley acknowledged his weaknesses.

“I have a tendency toward the pleasures of the flesh,” he told the Orange County Register in January. “It’s a battle for me, as far as weight and things like that. But I’m curbing them because I want to continue to do comedy, and the two don’t mix. So I try to fight those demons.”

Fat comics were his idols - Belushi, Jackie Gleason, John Candy. “The great comics can fall on their faces, but then they say, ‘Oh baby, you’re the greatest.’ They show their hearts and vulnerability.”

But Farley was aware of the dangers that being big as he was could pose. He told Playboy in September that he’d tried to diet - once.

“I was in the Pritikin Center in Santa Monica once, trying to lose 30 or 40 pounds in a month. I’d work my ass off on a treadmill and with the weights, but it was driving me nuts. So I escaped. Tom Arnold picked me up and we went to Le Dome and had tons of desserts. … When I got back to Pritikin, I got busted. They gave me a test, like a Breathalyzer for sugar.”

He also explained why he enjoyed playing the clown. “People work their asses off and they need a time to laugh. It’s up to us to bonk ourselves on the head and slip on a banana peel so the average guy can say, ‘Good God. I may be bad, honey, but I’m not as much of an idiot as that guy on the screen.”’