Tracy Morgan is the sort of living comedy icon who can elicit laughs as soon as he enters a room. But behind the comedy, he's experienced serious pain. From a rough upbringing to the horrific car accident that nearly ended it all, these are the tragic details of Tracy Morgan's life.

Morgan grew up in the Tompkins housing project in Brooklyn's rough-and-tumble Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. He talked about his childhood in a 2009 interview with NPR's Fresh Air and recalled a stormy relationship with his mother, who had split from his father. Growing up in the neighborhood he jokingly dubbed "Ghetto USA," he described his childhood as not particularly happy, but also not particularly out of the ordinary. As he put it,

"I was like any other inner-city kid with a chip on his shoulder because his daddy and his mommy [weren't] together."

When Morgan's father returned home from the Vietnam War, he also brought back a nasty drug habit. As Morgan recalled to Vanity Fair in 2018,

"My father was a heroin addict. He died of AIDS. But he was always in his kids' life. His kids [were] his legacy. Me, my brothers, and my sister were his world. We were his world."

In his 2009 memoir I Am the New Black, Morgan wrote about an incident from his senior year in high school in which his whole world turned upside down. After he and his father had a vicious fight that ended with Morgan telling his dad he wished he was dead, his father responded later that day by showing his son his test results indicating that he had AIDS.

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Rough childhood | 0:00

Dealing crack | 1:38

Friend's death | 2:37

Rocky start on SNL | 3:30

Sidelined by health woes | 4:37

DUI busts | 5:45

Horrific car accident | 6:54

Lingering effects | 8:21

Suing Walmart | 9:39

New car fender-bender | 10:59