NEWS / Death certificate issued for actor Paul Reubens, best known for playing Pee-wee Herman

The death certificate for actor Paul Reubens, best known for playing childlike comedy icon Pee-wee Herman, has been issued, confirming his cause of death as “acute hypoxic respiratory failure,” which likely occurred as a result of the actor’s battle with both lung and blood cancer. Reubens passed away at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angels on July 30 at the age of 70.

Reubens kept his cancer diagnosis private, so his death came as a surprise.

“Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” Reubens wrote in a statement that was posted on his Instagram account peeweeherman the day of his death. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

It was discovered that Reubens had been suffering from acute myelogenous leukemia, a form of blood cancer, and metastatic lung cancer. Reubens’s immediate cause of death, “acute hypoxic respiratory failure” is a condition caused by body tissues not having sufficient oxygen. It can be caused by cancer and is often fatal.

A native of Westchester County, New York, Reubens grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and, inspired by the Ringling Bros Circus, decided to pursue comedy acting. He eventually moved to Los Angeles, California, where he joined the comedy troupe the Groundlings and became increasingly popular in the 1970s. He developed the character of Pee-wee Herman, an impatient, but fun-loving man-child. In 1980, Reubens appeared as his character in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie and auditioned to join Saturday Night Live, but was not selected, leading him to create The Pee-wee Herman Show.

In 1985, Reubens had first major movie role in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which was also the directorial debut of legendary director Tim Burton. Reubens went on to to create Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a TV show that was primarily aimed at children and featured Herman interacting with fantastical characters, such as talking furniture and appliances.

In 1991, however, Reubens was forced to abandon his Pee-wee Herman character as he got arrested for masturbating in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida. The arrest and subsequent scandal temporarily halted Reubens’s acting career, but the actor eventually returned to the big screen in 1999 in the superhero comedy film Mystery Men. He later had a more serious role in the biographical crime drama Blow in 2001.

In 2002, Reubens was charged with possession of child pornography, but those charges were later dropped as Reubens made bulk purchases of vintage erotica and could not have known that some of those photographs included naked pictures of underage individuals.

Reubens went on to appear in shows like Murphy Brown, 30 Rock, Portlandia, The Blacklist, and Gotham. He revived the character of Pee-wee Herman in a Los Angeles and Broadway musical version of The Pee-wee Herman Show in 2010. He also co-wrote and starred in the Netflix original film Pee-wee’s Big Holiday in 2016.

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