Mark Curry says friends kept him from suicide

updated 6:53 p.m. ET Feb. 14, 2007

NEW YORK - Comedian Mark Curry, who starred in the 1990s sitcom “Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper,” says that if it wasn’t for some of his comic friends he probably would have committed suicide last spring after a freak accident landed him in the hospital with second-degree burns.

Appearing on “The Montel Williams Show” set to air Thursday, Curry, 42, said he suffered burns over 18 percent of his body after a falling can of spray starch ruptured and sparked a fire in his California home.

“It was so bad ... that pain was so excruciating that I just threw it out,” said Curry, recalling the moment when he woke up from a three-day, medically induced coma.

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“I wanted to kill myself and, by the fourth day, I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ I felt less than a man. I couldn’t even look at my own body. I saw my hand with the peeling skin and threw up, and I didn’t look at myself again.”

He then decided to hoard his pain medication and commit suicide by overdosing on it, he said. But Curry, who also appeared on TV’s “Fat Actress” and “The Drew Carey Show,” said he changed his mind after talking to some funny friends, like Sinbad and Bill Cosby.

“They made me laugh, and that helped a lot,” he said.

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