Summary

• Larry David didn’t seem to age a day throughout Curb Your Enthusiasm’s entire 25-year run.
• The groundbreaking single-camera shooting style and improvised dialogue of Curb Your Enthusiasm revolutionized TV comedy.
• Larry David managed to look more or less the same age while his co-stars aged around him.

Larry David didn’t seem to age a day throughout Curb Your Enthusiasm’s entire run, but the show was on the air for 25 years, so how old was David in each season? With its improvised dialogue, single-camera shooting style, and actors playing themselves, Curb Your Enthusiasm revolutionized TV comedy. The death of the multi-camera sitcom can partly be attributed to the ground that Curb broke.

While his co-stars aged around him, David seemed to stay the same age throughout the two-and-a-half decades that Curb spent on the air. He doesn’t look much older in 2024’s season 12 than he did in the original 1999 special. But of course, he did age throughout the show’s run.

13 Larry David Is 51-52 Years Old In The Original Curb Your Enthusiasm Special

Before being retooled as a half-hour series, Curb Your Enthusiasm began its life as a one-off special in 1999. Larry David was looking to get back into standup comedy after leaving Seinfeld between its seventh and eighth seasons. Jeff Garlin suggested filming his comedy comeback as an HBO special, with various standup sets showing the act evolving and documentary footage of Larry’s life in between. Instead of shooting real documentary footage of his life, David wrote scripted scenarios like getting into trouble with his wife and charging HBO for hotel porn.

In this original hour-long special, David was around 51-52 years old. There are some distinctive differences between the special and the series that followed. In the special, Larry and Cheryl have kids (and Cheryl is shown to strongly dislike Jeff). But the uniquely cringe-inducing tone was there from the start.

12 Larry David Is 52-53 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 1

HBO was quick to develop the hour-long Curb Your Enthusiasm special into a half-hour series, so in the first season of the show, released in 2000, David is just a year older – around 52-53 years old – than he was in the special. Curb settled into its groove instantly with razor-sharp improvisers bringing the outlined storylines to life with a sense of verisimilitude that added to the hilarity of the awkward situations. Larry’s dynamics with Jeff, Cheryl, Susie, and Richard Lewis were all established right out of the gate in this first season.

The first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm is the only one that doesn’t have an overarching storyline. There’s no fatwa or spite store or Atlanta arrest in season 1. It just consists of 10 hilarious standalone episodes that introduced the cringeworthy idiosyncrasies of this game-changing sitcom masterpiece.

11 Larry David Is 53-54 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 2

Later in Curb Your Enthusiasm’s run, it stopped following a traditional TV release model. Instead of making a new season every single year, David simply waited for inspiration to strike, and when he got 10 stories together, HBO would make some room in the schedule. But in its first few years, Curb followed the typical annual model of TV releases. Season 2 was made right on the heels of season 1 and aired a year later in 2001. When David filmed Curb Your Enthusiasm season 2, he was around 53-54 years old.

Season 2 rounded out the characters a bit more. It sees Larry returning to the TV world to develop a new sitcom for Jason Alexander (and later for Julia Louis-Dreyfus after a falling-out with Jason). This season features one of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s greatest episodes: season 2, episode 7, “The Doll.”

10 Larry David Is 54-55 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 3

Curb continued to follow a traditional TV release schedule in its third season. David was around 54-55 years older when he filmed Curb Your Enthusiasm season 3 shortly after season 2 aired. In season 3, released in 2002, Larry, Jeff, and Ted Danson all invest in a hot new restaurant in L.A. and, as is usually the case whenever Larry is involved in something, the endeavor is plagued with disaster from the get-go.

They keep losing their head chefs, a corpse-sniffing dog warrants a police investigation in the kitchen, and Larry accidentally breaks the thumbs of a notorious restaurant critic who could make or break their business. Season 3 continues to round out the ups and downs of Larry and Cheryl’s marriage. It also further develops Larry’s long-standing rivalry with Susie. It just might be the all-time best season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

9 Larry David Is 56 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 4

After the first three seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm had each released one year apart, season 4 premiered a little later. Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4, episode 1, “Mel’s Offer,” hit the airwaves of HBO in 2004, about 15 months after the season 3 finale had aired. This wasn’t a huge gap between seasons, but it started a slippery slope into an inconsistent release schedule. David was 56 years old when he shot Curb Your Enthusiasm season 4.

Season 4 is a brilliantly meta homage to The Producers in which Mel Brooks casts Larry as the lead in the Broadway version of The Producers in a bid to tank the show. The Producers is about two Broadway producers intentionally trying to make a flop. Curb season 4 is about Brooks intentionally trying to make The Producers itself into a flop.

8 Larry David Is 57-58 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 5

The gaps between seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm started to get a little bigger in season 5. After the super-sized season 4 finale – season 4, episode 10, “Opening Night” – Curb went on a brief hiatus. Season 5 premiered in 2005, about 18 months after the season 4 finale, breaking the yearly release cycle of the first four seasons. David was around 57-58 years old when he filmed Curb Your Enthusiasm season 5.

Season 5 follows the dual storylines of Richard Lewis needing a kidney transplant and Larry hiring a private investigator to figure out if he’s adopted. In the season finale – season 5, episode 10, “The End” – these two story arcs converge for a spiritual awakening. Larry temporarily dies after the transplant operation, goes to Heaven, meets his guardian angels, and gets promptly kicked out and sent back down to Earth.

7 Larry David Is 59-60 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 6

In 2007, season 6 premiered nearly two full years after the season 5 premiere. David was around 59-60 years old when he filmed Curb Your Enthusiasm season 6, completing a full decade of Curb (and that would ultimately just be the first half of the series’ run). In season 6, Larry and Cheryl take in a displaced family from a Katrina-level hurricane. Also, midway through the season, Cheryl leaves Larry and he reluctantly re-enters the dating pool.

Curb season 6 marked a watershed moment for the series. This is the season that introduced J.B. Smoove to the main cast in the role of Larry’s streetwise sidekick Leon Black. There are two distinctive eras of Curb: pre-Leon and post-Leon. After Leon arrived, the show felt incomplete without him. Smoove managed to make the funniest show on television even funnier.

6 Larry David Is 61-62 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7

Another two full years after the last season premiered, Curb Your Enthusiasm season 7 began airing on HBO in 2009. This season took Curb’s signature meta-ness to yet another level of genius. David managed to do a Seinfeld reunion without really doing a Seinfeld reunion by doing an in-universe reunion in the Curb world. Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards all play fictionalized, Curb-ified versions of themselves as Larry reassembles them for a reunion show (with the ulterior motive of winning Cheryl back).

David was around 61-62 years old when he filmed the seventh season of Curb. The Seinfeld actors, who all reunited for a fake reunion in the Curb-verse, are slightly younger. Seinfeld was 54 when he shot Curb season 7, Alexander was 49, Louis-Dreyfus was 47, and Richards was 59.

5 Larry David Is 63 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8

Curb didn’t quite take two full years to return for its next season. Whereas the last three seasons had all premiered in September, two years apart, season 8 premiered in July of 2011. David was 63 years old when he filmed Curb Your Enthusiasm season 8. Season 8 was the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm for a while, as David took a lengthy hiatus between the eighth season and the next four seasons.

Season 8 sees Larry taking a months-long trip to New York just to avoid doing one day’s worth of charity work. From episode 3, “Palestinian Chicken,” to episode 10, “Larry vs. Michael J. Fox,” season 8 has some of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s absolute best episodes. With a simple change of scenery, Curb gave Larry a whole city full of new people to annoy.

4 Larry David Is 69 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 9

Curb Your Enthusiasm took the longest hiatus of its entire run between seasons 8 and 9. There were a whopping six years between Curb’s eighth season and its ninth, and during that hiatus, there was no confirmation that a season 9 would ever come to fruition. Season 9 finally premiered in 2017 with the premise of Larry getting a death sentence from the Ayatollah for making fun of Salman Rushdie’s fatwa in a musical comedy.

David was 69 years old when Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9 was in production. Overall, season 9 ended up being one of Curb’s weaker seasons, but there’s some great material in there. Ted Danson dating Cheryl was a hilarious development in his love/hate relationship with Larry and Lin-Manuel Miranda gave a delightfully self-deprecating turn in the last couple of episodes.

3 Larry David Is 71 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10

Thankfully, David didn’t take another six-year hiatus between seasons 9 and 10 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it was still a two-year wait. Season 9 finished airing on December 3, 2017, and season 10 premiered on January 19, 2020. Season 10 began filming in October of 2018, nearly a full year after HBO’s initial season 10 renewal. David was 71 years old when he shot the 10th season of Curb.

Season 10 revives Larry’s rivalry with Mocha Joe from back in season 7. After being dissatisfied with Mocha Joe’s customer service (and his cold coffee, soft scones, and wobbly tables), Larry vows to open a “spite store” next door – a rival coffee shop named Latte Larry’s – with the sole purpose of driving Mocha Joe out of business by offering cheaper coffee. This was the ultimate Curb premise; the pinnacle of pettiness.

2 Larry David Is 73 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 11

About a year and a half after season 10 concluded its run on HBO, Curb Your Enthusiasm season 11 began airing in October of 2021. Season 11 began filming in November of 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging on (necessitating masks and face shields on the set), and wrapped in May of 2021. David was 73 years old when he shot the 11th season of Curb.

Season 11 is one of Curb’s most complicated and densely plotted seasons. It involves Larry getting blackmailed into hiring a terrible actor for his new streaming show and dating a ruthlessly unpleasant city councilwoman in a bid to get an obscure local law overturned, making the blackmail plot moot. This season introduced two of the funniest characters from Curb’s latter-day era: Irma Kostroski and Maria Sofia Estrada.

1 Larry David Is 75 Years Old In Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12

The final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, season 12, was released in 2024, but it wrapped filming as far back as March 2023. David was 75 years old when he shot the final season of Curb. This final season concluded a groundbreaking quarter-century run that changed the face of TV comedy.

In the season premiere – season 12, episode 1, “Atlanta” – Larry is arrested for unwittingly breaking a controversial Georgia law that forbids people from giving food or water to voters in line at a polling station. This set up a Seinfeld finale redo in the final episode, in which Larry stands trial in Atlanta and a succession of his past enemies resurface to testify against him as character witnesses. With its sly self-awareness and viciously ironic bite, this was a perfect ending for Curb Your Enthusiasm.