How Did Bernie Mac Define True Success in Life and Comedy?

Success ain't about the money, and don't let nobody tell you different. I'm blessed to have made money, real money, but that ain't what I measure my life by. If I measured my life by a bank account, I would've quit a long time ago when things was hard.

True success is when you can look in the mirror and know you did right by the people you love. That's it. That's the whole thing right there. My wife Rhonda — that woman stood by me when I was doing stand-up in clubs for pennies, when I was grinding, when I was tired, when I didn't know if this thing was ever gonna work out. We built something together. That's success to me.

In comedy, success meant I could finally tell the truth without apologizing. For years, you gotta play it safe, gotta make certain people comfortable, gotta work your way up. But when I got to a certain point with the Kings of Comedy tour with Cedric, Steve, and D.L., we could be ourselves. We could be raw and real and speak to our people in a way that mattered. We wasn't just making 'em laugh — we was healing 'em. We was saying things they needed to hear.

The show, The Bernie Mac Show, that was success because I could control the message and show people who I really am — not the tough guy, but the man who lost his mother to cancer at sixteen and had to grow up fast. The man who knows struggle. The man who knows family first and everything else second.

Success is being able to take care of your family, yeah. But more than that, it's being able to sleep at night knowing you was honest. You stood up for something. You didn't compromise your character for comfort. You used whatever platform you got — whether it's big or small — to make people think, to make people feel, to make people remember they worth something.

That's the only success that matters to me at the end of the day.