Some celebrities show up for interviews with an entourage. Bernie Mac shows up with medical equipment. After a hospital stay and three weeks flat on his back fighting a case of pneumonia, the comedian turned actor is having trouble breathing and is tethered by a tube to a nearby oxygen tank. A lesser man might have taken the day off. Not Mac. Although being linked to the tank hinders his body language and his energy level is low, Mac perseveres. When you've been through what he has, a bout of pneumonia is no big deal.

Mac grew up in the toughest of circumstances: living in poverty, rarely seeing his absentee father and suffering through the death of almost every family member he was close to while he was still young, including his mother, two brothers and his grandmother and grandfather. Angry and confused but focused on the lessons he had learned from his mother, he found a series of odd jobs in Chicago, including driving a Wonder bread truck, working as a cook and delivering appliances for Sears.

But through it all, he was funny. As early as elementary school he found he had a knack for telling stories and making people laugh. He took a while to focus, but eventually he tried his hand at comedy full-time. At first he met with only modest success, playing local clubs and theaters in Chicago. Then came Russell Simmons's Def Comedy Jam and the Kings of Comedy tour, with Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley and Cedric the Entertainer, where he scored big-time with his streetwise and mostly scatological musings about men, women, sex and family--all liberally spiced with the word "motherfucker" and all based on his own rough background. That led to small movie roles and, finally, his own sitcom.

The Bernie Mac Show is in its fourth season, and Mac has been nominated twice for an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series. The show, about a 40ish, childless comedian named Bernie Mac who takes in his sister's three kids when she enters rehab, is partly based on Mac's own life and his strong opinions about how children should behave.

The TV show opened the door to better film roles, and Mac appeared as Chris Rock's older brother in Head of State. He also played the deadpan retail security chief in Bad Santa, with Billy Bob Thornton, and took the Bosley reins from Bill Murray in the sequel to Charlie's Angels.

This fall, at the age of 46, Mac grabbed his first lead role, as a big-league hitter desperate to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Mr. 3000. He also returns as part of the neo-Rat Pack in Ocean's Twelve and will soon co-star with Ashton Kutcher in a modern-day retelling of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, currently titled Guess Who.

Contributing Editor David Rensin, who did our 20Q with Mac in 2003, met with the actor-comedian recently in Los Angeles as he began filming Guess Who. Reports Rensin, "Both at his house and in his trailer on the set of the movie, Bernie needed oxygen from his always-nearby tank. But Bernie was still Bernie--the man who can answer a simple question with a 30-minute story--and he wasn't going to let his health slow him down. He began the interview playing the host, not the patient."

Some celebrities show up for interviews with an entourage. Bernie Mac shows up with medical equipment. After a hospital stay and three weeks flat on his back fighting a case of pneumonia, the comedian turned actor is having trouble breathing and is tethered by a tube to a nearby oxygen tank. A lesser man might have taken the day off. Not Mac. Although being linked to the tank hinders his body language and his energy level is low, Mac perseveres. When you've been through what he has, a bout of pneumonia is no big deal.

Mac grew up in the toughest of circumstances: living in poverty, rarely seeing his absentee father and suffering through the death of almost every family member he was close to while he was still young, including his mother, two brothers and his grandmother and grandfather. Angry and confused but focused on the lessons he had learned from his mother, he found a series of odd jobs in Chicago, including driving a Wonder bread truck, working as a cook and delivering appliances for Sears.

But through it all, he was funny. As early as elementary school he found he had a knack for telling stories and making people laugh. He took a while to focus, but eventually he tried his hand at comedy full-time. At first he met with only modest success, playing local clubs and theaters in Chicago. Then came Russell Simmons's Def Comedy Jam and the Kings of Comedy tour, with Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley and Cedric the Entertainer, where he scored big-time with his streetwise and mostly scatological musings about men, women, sex and family--all liberally spiced with the word "motherfucker" and all based on his own rough background. That led to small movie roles and, finally, his own sitcom.

The Bernie Mac Show is in its fourth season, and Mac has been nominated twice for an Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series. The show, about a 40ish, childless comedian named Bernie Mac who takes in his sister's three kids when she enters rehab, is partly based on Mac's own life and his strong opinions about how children should behave.

The TV show opened the door to better film roles, and Mac appeared as Chris Rock's older brother in Head of State. He also played the deadpan retail security chief in Bad Santa, with Billy Bob Thornton, and took the Bosley reins from Bill Murray in the sequel to Charlie's Angels.

This fall, at the age of 46, Mac grabbed his first lead role, as a big-league hitter desperate to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Mr.