Richard Simmons


Milton Teagle "Richard" Simmons is a semi-retired American fitness instructor, actor, and video producer, known for his eccentric, flamboyant, and energetic personality. He has promoted weight-loss programs, most prominently through his Sweatin' to the Oldies line of aerobics videos.
Simmons began his weight-loss career by opening his gym Slimmons in Beverly Hills, California, catering to the overweight, and he became widely known through exposure on television and through the popularity of his consumer products. He is often parodied and was a frequent guest of late night television and radio talk shows, such as the Late Show with David Letterman and The Howard Stern Show.
He continued to promote health and exercise through a decades-long career and later broadened his activities to include political activism – such as in 2008 in support of a bill mandating non-competitive physical education in public schools as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act.
By March 2016, after his not having made any major public appearances since February 2014, speculation and expressions of concern about his well-being began to surface in the media. Both Simmons and his publicist have said the concerns were unwarranted and that he is simply choosing to be less publicly visible.
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Simmons resurfaced on his YouTube channel to help people stay fit at home.

Early life

Milton Teagle Simmons was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on July 12, 1948 to Leonard Douglas Simmons Sr. and Shirley May. He was born to "show business parents" and raised in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He has one older brother named Leonard Jr. His father was raised Methodist and worked as a master of ceremonies and later in thrift stores. His mother was Russian Jewish and was a traveling fan dancer and later a store cosmetics saleswoman.
Simmons later converted to Catholicism and attended Brother Martin High School. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette before graduating from Florida State University with a BA in Art.
He became obese during his early childhood and adolescence. He began to overeat and became overweight as early as the age of 4 or earlier, and by the age of 5, he knew it was perceived negatively. At the age of 15, he weighed. As a young man, he considered being a priest. As a young adult art student, he had appeared among the "freak show" characters in the Fellini films Satyricon and The Clowns, and he eventually reached a peak of.
In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Simmons explained he adopted the name Richard after an uncle who paid for his college tuition. His first job in New Orleans was as a child, selling pralines at Leah's Pralines.

Career

Fitness career

Upon moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s, he worked as the Maître d'hotel at Derek's, a restaurant in Beverly Hills. He developed an interest in fitness. Exercise studios of the day favored the already fit customer, so there was little help for those who needed to gain fitness from an otherwise unhealthy state. He established gyms, and his interest in fitness helped him lose.
Simmons later opened his own exercise studio, originally called "The Anatomy Asylum," where emphasis was placed on healthy eating in proper portions and enjoyable exercise in a supportive atmosphere. The business originally included a salad bar restaurant called Ruffage, the name a pun on the word roughage, though it was eventually removed as the focus of the Asylum shifted solely to exercise. Later renamed "Slimmons," the establishment continued operations in Beverly Hills, and Simmons taught motivational classes and aerobics throughout the week. Slimmons closed in November 2016.
In 2010, Simmons stated he had kept off his own 100+ pound weight loss for 42 years, had been helping others lose weight for 35 years, and that in the course of his fitness career he had helped humanity lose approximately 12million pounds. Simmons used the web as a method of outreach by running his own membership-based website and also has official pages on numerous social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube.

In media

Simmons began to draw media attention due to the success of his health club that began with him on Real People, where he was shown at work. He introduced customers whom he had helped to lose weight. He later had guest roles on Battlestars, Body Language, Super Password, Win, Lose or Draw, Match Game, Price Is Right, $25,000 Pyramid, Hollywood Squares, and Nickelodeon's Figure It Out.
Positive viewer reactions landed Simmons a recurring role as himself in General Hospital over a 4-year period. This, as well as being in shopping malls, where he taught exercise classes, led to further media attention. In the early 1980s, Simmons hosted two shows Slim Cookin and the Emmy Award-winning talk show The Richard Simmons Show, in which he focused on personal health, fitness, exercise, and healthy cooking. The Richard Simmons Show drew thousands of exercise enthusiasts, including SAG/AFTRA actress Lucrecia Sarita Russo, who reportedly transported an entire bus filled with women from Pam's Figure Tique for a lively workout on the show.
In 1998, Simmons voiced Boone in .
He has been featured as himself on numerous television series, including Whose Line Is It Anyway?, CHiPs, Saturday Night Live, The Larry Sanders Show, and in the Arrested Development episode "Bringing Up Buster." In 1999, he hosted the short-lived television series DreamMaker. In 2007, he filmed the PBS pledge drive special Love Yourself and Win.
He has been featured in television advertisements for Sprint, Yoplait, and Herbal Essence Shampoos. In late 2007, he was in a "This is SportsCenter" commercial on ESPN as the show's "conditioning coach". In Canada Simmons was in an advertisement for Simmons mattresses. The mattress company hired the exercise celebrity because of the similarity in name, and for his appeal to the company's target audience of women over 35. Beyond this, there is no further business partnership between the two.
In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "No Pain, No Gain," Simmons lent his voice to an exercise trainer bearing his animated likeness, leading a class filled with large anthropomorphic animals.
From 2006 to 2008, he hosted a radio show on Sirius Stars titled Lighten Up with Richard Simmons.

Personality

Simmons uses his energetic and motivational demeanor to encourage people to lose weight. His high energy level is always featured in his workout videos. His trademark attire is candy-striped Dolphin shorts and tank tops decorated with Swarovski crystals.
Simmons interacts at a personal level with people using his products. This began by personally answering fan mail he received as a cast member of General Hospital. As of 2008, he personally answered emails and letters and made hundreds of phone calls each week to those seeking his help.
He claims to have few friends, saying, "I don't have a lot to offer to one person. I have a lot to offer to a lot of people." Aside from his three Dalmatians and two maids, Simmons lives alone in Beverly Hills, California. While his sexual orientation has been the subject of much speculation, he has never publicly discussed his sexuality.
In a 2012 interview with Men's Health, he had this to say:

Hurricane Katrina response

In September 2005, Simmons was on Entertainment Tonight to discuss the effects of Hurricane Katrina on his family in his hometown of New Orleans, and his involvement in aiding those affected by the hurricane. On August 29, 2006, Simmons was on Your World with Neil Cavuto while making a return visit to New Orleans one year after the flooding, a visit he repeated on March 2, 2007, now talking about his recent trip to Washington, D.C., to promote and raise awareness about The Strengthening Physical Education Act of 2007.

Retreat from public life

Simmons has not made any major public appearances since 2014, and stopped appearing in public at all in February of that year. In March 2016, speculation began that he was being held hostage by his housekeeper.
In response, on March 14, Simmons gave an audio interview on the Today Show, denying the rumors. In November, the Simmons fitness gym closed, without any public announcement from Simmons. In February 2017, the podcast Missing Richard Simmons launched, investigating why Simmons left public life so suddenly.
In March 2017, LAPD detectives visited Simmons' home to conduct a welfare check, issuing a statement that Simmons is "perfectly fine" and that "right now he is doing what he wants to do and it is his business." On April 19, 2017, following a hospitalization for severe indigestion, Simmons made his first public comment in over a year, posting on Facebook a photo of himself and the message "I'm not 'missing', just a little under the weather". However, the picture that was included in the post was from as far back as 2013, leading to speculation that the person who posted the message might not actually have been Simmons.
In May 2017, Simmons sued the National Enquirer, Radar Online and American Media, Inc. for libel and false claims that he was undergoing gender reassignment. In September 2017, Simmons lost the lawsuit, and was ordered to pay the defendants' attorney's fees. The judge ruled that "because courts have long held that a misidentification of certain immutable characteristics do not naturally tend to injure one's reputation, even if there is sizeable portion of the population who hold prejudices against those characteristics, misidentification of a person as transgender is not actionable defamation absent special damages."
In June 2018, Simmons sued a Los Angeles private investigator, claiming that he had placed a tracking device over a year earlier on the only vehicle Simmons used for transportation, noting that such tracking is in violation of California law. In July 2018, Simmons amended the suit, alleging that the investigator had been hired by In Touch Weekly, and prosecutors filed a criminal complaint.

Print and other media

Books

Analog compact cassette

DVD