Richard Jeni, a popular and much loved comedian who was a regular on The Tonight Show, is dead at 45 of a gunshot wound. Jeni's girlfriend reported that he had shot himself and he died at the hospital a short time later. An official cause of death has not yet been released.

Besides his Tonight Show appearances he also had a role in the The Mask (1994) as Charlie Shumaker and in National Lampoon's Dad's Week Off (1997) as Bernie, and in An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1998) as Jerry Glover plus a number of other roles.