'I'M NOT LOOKING FOR A COMEBACK,

A RACIST RANT UPENDED HIS CAREER 17 YEARS AGO. NOW THE FORMER SEINFELD STAR IS OPENING UP ABOUT THAT SHOCKING INCIDENT AND MORE IN HIS NEW MEMOIR

- GILLIAN TELLING

On April 30 Seinfeld fans were surprised to see Michael Richards, the actor who played Cosmo Kramer on the sitcom from 1989 to 1998, at the premiere of Jerry Seinfeld's new movie Unfrosted. For the past 17 years Richards has largely stayed out of the public eye, since the night in 2006 when he was caught on-camera hurling racial insults, including the N-word, to a group of hecklers during a stand-up set. Instead of doing an apology tour, he took a step back. "I was in a very dark place after the Laugh Factory incident," says Richards, now 74 and living in Los Angeles with his wife, Beth Skipp, and their son Antonio, 12. "It was a tremendous opportunity to see how much I could hate another person in the moment of being in such a fury and such a rage and so consumed, so volcanic, so fiery, so destructive."

After publicly apologizing days later on Late Show With David Letterman, he decided to focus inward. "The damage was inside of me," he "So I completely stepped away from show business. It was time to disappear and finally pay attention to where all of my anger was coming from. The most I could do for everybody was go home and get my s--- together."

He doesn't expect the world to forget. "I'm not looking for a comeback," he says. "I'm not looking for another television show." However, he is stepping back into the public eye with the release of his memoir Entrances and Exits, out June 4. "I felt like it was necessary to write it," he says of why he's releasing it now. "I had over 40 journals I'd kept over the years and wanted to do a full review of my life. I'm turning 75, so maybe wanting to do that is something that comes with being my age." He adds, "I wanted to connect with feelings and memory. I'm surprised at how much I was able to remember."