Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Jeff Garlin has struggled with compulsive eating, epilepsy, diabetes, attention deficit disorder, a heart defect and a stroke prior to the first season of Curb. You wouldn’t think spending 12 hours a day with Larry David would be the cure-all, but there you have it. “If you watch the first season, I am so strokey,” Garlin recalls in his interview with The Guardian, explaining how he subbed in a golf club for a cane. “It’s funnier to walk with a golf club. But Curb was the best rehab I could have had … the [improvisation] alone did wonders.” Currently preparing for a run of stand-up shows at London’s Soho Theatre, Garlin credits English comedy (“Monty Python changed my life.”) and the cathartic properties of humor for giving him comedic drive. “I always say that the reason for doing my job is to ease people’s pain. But now both of my parents have cancer, and in the last couple months I’m doing more standup than I have in years. And it’s easing my pain,” Garlin somberly tells an audience during a set, letting his meaning sink in before explaining, “I would give the best, most thorough blow job to cure my parents’ cancer. It would be a great blow job. I know what I like.”
