There are people who bring the fun to funny, with acts that could only have been ingenious even in their often obvious self-deprecation. Of all the people I have seen act on screen who could easily qualify for this qualification is Bernie Mac. And today, he is gone, dead of no less a disease than pneumonia.

I first met him as Percy Jones in 2005 comedy film, Guess Who, a loose re-make of a 1967 movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner about an African American girl who comes home with a white fiancé. Bernie was the buoyant, sarcastic but sensitive father of the bride-to-be who turned an already awkward meet-the-parent scenario into a roller-coaster weekend of toil and trouble. In Guess Who, Bernie manages to be funny without be monotonous; sarcastic without being simplistic. I have since found that to be his enduring trait: to interpret all role non-stereotypically. According to Wikipedia, “Mac was one of the few African American comedic actors to be able to break out of the traditional “black comedy” genre.”

I eventually saw more of him in Eddy Murphy’s Life as Jangle Leg, How to Be a Player as Buster, House Party as Uncle Vester, Ocean’s Eleven as Frank Catton, and Mr. 3000 as ball player Stan Ross. In all, Bernie gives an impressive performance worthy of any acting award. Sadly, the highest he got was the NAACP awards, and two Emmy nominations among others, for his roles in his The Bernie Mac Show – a fictive show on TV that adapted events that happened to him into a comic and dramatic re-presentation. The show would now end without a fit conclusive end.

Born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough on October 5, 1957 and raised in the south side of Chicago, wonderful actor Bernie Mac died on August 9, 2008 from pneumonia related complications at the age of 50.

Mac was number 72 on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 greatest standups of all time.

We will miss you Bernie.