"Bernie Mac just say what you want to say but can't." Thus spoke Bernard Jeffrey McCullough in his Fox sitcom, and thus did he live and work. Having showcased his politically incorrect stand-up in the movie The Original Kings of Comedy, he became a tough-love father figure on The Bernie Mac Show and a card dealer turned con artist in Ocean's Eleven. Mac worked hard to succeed — he was over 40 when he broke big — and he worked hard onstage, with a blustering, preacherly physicality. Mac was an outspoken uncle at the table, and his is a voice we'll miss.
—James Poniewozik