Bernie Mac, 50, star of stand-up comedy, television and movies

Actor and comedian Bernie Mac, 50, who won acclaim and affection as the goggle-eyed grump with the wise heart, died yesterday in Chicago of complications from pneumonia, his publicist Danica Smith said in a statement.

Whether doing stand-up comedy, television or movies, Mr. Mac knew how to get the attention of an audience.

He was a star among a new generation of African American comedians, featured with D.L. Hughley, Steve Harvey and Cedric the Entertainer in Spike Lee's 2000 documentary, The Original Kings of Comedy.

He starred in his own major-network sitcom.

And he starred on the big screen, with roles in such films as Ocean's Eleven (and Twelve and Thirteen) and Pride, set in Philadelphia.

"The world just got a little less funny," his Ocean's costar George Clooney said in a statement yesterday.

Mr. Mac had been hospitalized for more than a week. The Chicago Sun-Times reported Aug. 2 that a source had said he was "in very, very critical condition," but Smith denied that at the time and said Mr. Mac's treatment was going well.

She also told the Sun-Times that the pneumonia was not related to Mr. Mac's sarcoidosis, an inflammation that, according to the National Institutes of Health, usually starts in the lungs or lymph nodes. Mr. Mac disclosed in 2005 that he had the potentially deadly disease.

Born Jeffrey McCullough in Chicago on Oct. 5, 1957, Mr. Mac rose from poverty on the city's South Side to star in The Bernie Mac Show, a sitcom that ran from November 2001 through April 2006 on Fox. His performance as the foster parent for his jailed sister's three children brought Mr. Mac two Emmy nominations. The series won a Peabody Award in 2002.

In real life, Mr. Mac was "the king of his household" - much like his TV character, his daughter Je'niece Childress told the Associated Press yesterday.

His character was no Bill Cosby dad. He was big and blustery, physically imposing at 6-foot-3, and his approach to the audience was direct. Puffing on a cigar, he would look at the camera and tell the folks at home just how tough - physically tough - he was going to be on those kids. "I ain't ashamed that I said it, and ain't nobody gonna make me take it back," he said.

Nobody had to. Beneath the facade of toughness was a love that wasn't tough at all.

Mr. Mac knew about parental love. His single mother, Mary, died when he was 16, but she left behind words of wisdom that Mr. Mac cherished into adulthood, including: "Sometimes when you win, you lose; sometimes when you lose, you win."

"I came from a place where there wasn't a lot of joy," Mr. Mac told the AP in 2001. "I decided to try to make other people laugh when there wasn't a lot of things to laugh about."

Mr. Mac began his show-business career as a stand-up comic, playing Chicago's comedy clubs at age 19 in a suit borrowed from his brother.

He broke into movies in 1992 with a bit part in Mo' Money, eventually graduating to larger roles in movies such as Mr. 3000 (2004), about a baseball player who gets a second chance, and Guess Who (2005), a remake of the 1967 Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn/Sidney Poitier film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

His comedy career also bloomed. He did an HBO special in 1995 called Midnight Mac and joined the Kings of Comedy Tour in the late 1990s, crisscrossing the country with Hughley, Harvey, and Cedric the Entertainer.

Bernie Mac was proud of being a comedian.

"People don't give comedians credit for being great actors, but we're the best," he told Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey last year. "Comedians are great actors because of their imaginations. They know how to go into character and hold the audience's attention."

In the movie Pride, Mr. Mac went into character as Elston, the crotchety custodian of a Philadelphia recreation center whose cooperation helps Jim Ellis, played by Terrence Howard, create an inner-city swim team in Nicetown.

At the Philadelphia screening of Pride in February 2007, Mr. Mac was resplendent in a lime-green scarf and wool topcoat, with an impressive diamond decorating his left ear as he hugged Mayor John F. Street and asked, "What's up, young man?"

Besides his two Emmy nominations, Mr. Mac won a BET Comedy Award and a Black Reel Award in 2005; a Family Television Award in 2004; an NAACP Image Award in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006; and a Television Critics Association Award in 2002.