US comedian Louie Andersen dead at 68 after battle with cancer

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Emmy Award-winning comedian Louie Andersen has died following a battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, his publicist announced on Friday.

Andersen, 68, died at a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada due to complications from cancer, Glenn Schwartz, his long-time publicist, said, according to multiple reports.

The iconic comedian won an Emmy in 2016 for his portrayal of Christine Baskets, the mother of twins played by fellow comic Zach Galifianakis, in the FX television network show "Baskets." Andersen also received several Emmy nominations for his performance.

Comedian and actor Pauly Shore tweeted on Thursday that he visited Andersen in his Las Vegas hospital on Thursday when he was able to "say my goodbyes."

"He’s still with us but keep him in your prayers," Shore wrote.

Andersen had roles on the big and small screens dating back four decades to the 1980s when he portrayed a flower delivery man in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Maurice in the Eddy Murphy comedy Coming to America.

On television, Andersen hosted a revival of the Family Feud show, but is perhaps best known to a younger generation for creating the cartoon Life With Louie, in which he voiced himself as a child. He won two Daytime Emmy Awards for the show.

"Anderson crafted comedy routines that rang true for his early club audiences while reducing them to helpless fits of laughter, routines that led him from his career as a counselor to troubled children to the first­-place trophy at the 1981 Midwest Comedy Competition," Schwartz, Andersen's publicist, said in a statement, according to NBC News.

Andersen was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1953.