LOS ANGELES — While Garry Shandling’s fellow comedians fought to host a late-night show, he brushed away the prospect.

“I would not do a show where you just sit and talk to somebody,” the humorist said in 1993 when he was courted by NBC to succeed David Letterman on “Late Night.”

He’d blown up the format with “The Larry Sanders Show,” the HBO series about the making of a fictional talk show that drew on his own neurotic self-absorption – and that of Hollywood – for exquisite satire.

Doctors said Shandling, 66, died Thursday of an apparent heart attack, according to Alan Nierob, his spokesman. Shandling, who was taken to a hospital after paramedics were dispatched to his Brentwood home, had no history of heart trouble, Nierob said.

Coroner’s Lt. David Smith said it appeared Shandling died of natural causes, but an official cause of death determination had not yet been made. No autopsy was planned, but officials would determine Shandling’s cause of death based on medical records and his medical history .

His death prompted an outpouring of respect and affection from the comedy community.

“Garry Shandling was one of the most brilliant people I have ever known,” Billy Crystal tweeted. Steve Martin lauded Shandling’s “beautifully unpredictable mind” in a Twitter post.

Shandling had a face and voice made for comedy, with pillowy lips that delivered punchlines in a tone that verged on whining.

In a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, he explained his perspective on his art.

“The answer isn’t gonna be in the facts,” he said. “It’s gonna be in intuition. That’s how I work creatively. I’m always teaching people that the answer to that creative question is right here, in the room, between us here.”

More to the point, it was dealing with the questions he confronted in himself.

Born on Nov. 29, 1949, in Chicago, Shandling was raised in Tucson, Arizona. On arriving in Los Angeles as a young adult, it was a short hop from a brief stint in the advertising business to comedy writing and standup.

In the 1980s, he began to experiment with TV comedy and toy with the sitcom form with his first series, “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” a Showtime project that made no bones about its inherently artificial nature: The actors in this otherwise standard domestic comedy routinely broke the fourth wall to comment on what they were up to. Even the theme song began with the explanatory lyrics, “The theme to Garry’s show….”

In August 1992, Shandling created for HBO his comic masterpiece with “The Larry Sanders Show,” which starred him as an egomaniacal latenight TV host with an angstridden show-biz life behind the scenes.

It was just three months after Johnny Carson had retired from “The Tonight Show,” where Shandling had appeared as a stand-up and occasional Carson stand-in. It seemed a wry but deeply felt homage to the King of Late Night.

But it was more. “Larry Sanders” proved to be an act of courage, a brave effort led by someone portraying a character dangerously close to himself.