Comedy Saved My Life: Mark Curry Contemplates Suicide

Appearing on "The Montel Williams Show" set to air Today, Curry, 42, said he suffered burns over 18 percent of his body after a falling can of spray starch ruptured and sparked a fire in his California home.


NEW YORK Feb 14, 2007 (AP)— Comedian Mark Curry, who starred in the 1990s sitcom "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper," says that if it wasn't for some of his comic friends such as Bill Cosby and Sinbad, he probably would have committed suicide last spring after a freak accident landed him in the hospital with second-degree burns.

"It was so bad … that pain was so excruciating that I just threw it out," said Curry, recalling the moment when he woke up from a three-day, medically induced coma.

"I wanted to kill myself and, by the fourth day, I said, `I can't do this.' I felt less than a man. I couldn't even look at my own body. I saw my hand with the peeling skin and threw up, and I didn't look at myself again."