He sleeps strapped to an oxygen tank. Yet at the age of 90, two decades since his last leading role, comedy legend Jerry Lewis has returned to Hollywood and is busier than ever.
He stars in the new drama Max Rose, which debuts in the US this week, is writing a new film he plans to direct next year, launches a US comedy tour later this month and hopes to direct The Nutty Professor musical on Broadway.
"I haven't slowed down at all," says the star of classic comedies including The Nutty Professor, The Bellhop and acclaimed drama The King Of Comedy.
Yet while his mind is alert his eyesight and hearing are fading and his legs fail him. Lewis gets around by motorised wheelchair and can only walk a few steps with his cane. His spine is bent from decades of pratfalls and he often winces with discomfort.
"It's hard for me to get out and do things because it's such an ordeal," he confesses.
"I'm blind, I can't hear and I don't walk too well. I'm having trouble sleeping and my hands fall asleep every 15 minutes or so," Lewis laughs.
"Every day is another something that comes along. But I am very happy to know that mentally I am very sharp."
He has been married for 33 years to his second wife Sam, a former dancer 24 years his junior, but still laments losing one of the great loves of his life: his comedy partner Dean Martin.
"I miss Dean," he says.
"I fell in love with him the day we met. I wish he were here. He was a miracle that God put in my life and working with him was a feeling I'll never ever forget."
Together they formed one of the world's most successful double acts in 17 hit movies, although they parted acrimoniously after a decade in 1956.
"It was time for us both," he says.
They did not speak again for 20 years. Frank Sinatra staged a rapprochement for Martin and Lewis in 1975 and they remained close until the crooner's death in 1995. "There isn't a day I don't think about him," says Lewis.
"You can't write love off or put it on hold. It stays with you until death."
Jerry's return to movies in Max Rose is not a comedy but more a poignant drama playing an ageing jazz musician forced to re-evaluate his life as he ponders whether his late wife had a long-time affair.
After rejecting thousands of scripts Lewis admits: "I fell in love with the material."
In the film Max Rose struggles with a strained relationship with his son. This rang true for Lewis, who endured a fraught relationship with his own son Joseph, a drug addict who committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 45.
"To this day I don't understand it because it's unfair - not unfair to me but unfair to him," says Lewis.
"That he went that way made the unfairness stupidity. But he was my son and he's gone and there's not a lot I can do about that. You don't get over it."
Lewis has starred in more than 50 films and says: "I feel I have been a part of some very wonderful films."
But there is one that he vows audiences will never see, even after his death. Lewis wrote, directed and starred in The Day The Clown Cried in 1972 but it remains notoriously unfinished, unreleased and unseen.