text: Dr. Fredric Brandt, who spent decades masking the aging process of celebrities with the promise of eternal youth, cut short his own life inside his Miami home. Friends and family attributed the death to an illness he couldn't kick. 
   
   “He suffered from depression,” said Jacquie Tractenberg, Brandt’s publicist of 20 years. 
   
   Brandt, the South Florida dermatologist dubbed “Baron of Botox” by W Magazine, a man who made his career ironing out celebrity wrinkles and who pioneered a line of skin care products to protect against the brutal Florida sun, was 65. The doctor’s clients included Madonna, Kelly Ripa and model Stephanie Seymour. 
   
   Miami police ruled his death a suicide. Officers responded to a call placed by John Joseph Hupert, a friend who was staying at the Coconut Grove house with Brandt. According to the police report, Hupert was concerned that the doctor, who was under psychiatric care for depression, was suicidal. 
   
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   He found Brandt hanging from a yellow cord with a white towel around his neck in the house garage around 9:15 a.m. Sunday. He last saw Brandt alive at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday. 
   
   According to Miami Herald celebrity columnist Lesley Abravanel, Brandt, who had practices in Coral Gables and New York City, was reportedly "devastated" over comparisons to the protagonist played by Martin Short on an episode of Tina Fey’s new Netflix show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. 
   
   The show’s Dr. Franff character shared Brandt’s lunar-white and smooth skin, platinum blond ’do and passion for plastic surgery but held the character to ridicule by flaunting an exaggerated speech impediment due to the overdoing of plastic surgery. 
   
   “He did not commit suicide because of the show,” Tractenberg said. “The show didn’t help. It was mean. He felt bullied. It was mean-spirited picking at the way he looked for no reason at all. But he suffered from depression before that.” 
   
   Netflix did not respond to a request for comment. 
   
   Coconut Grove businesswoman and dancer Carolyn Weinkle Lamb, a longtime client, said the satirical TV portrayal didn’t reflect the true Dr. Brandt. 
   
   “Some were put off by the way he looked. He was right off the runway of any fashion designer,” she said. “But inside he was just a beautiful guy and that had nothing to do with medicine.” 
   
   Born Fredric Sheldon Brandt in June 1949 in Newark, New Jersey, to parents who owned a neighborhood candy store, the inquisitive kid, a self-described “science geek” and competitive swimmer, lost his father Irving at 15 and his mother Esther at 22 as he was entering Drexel University Medical School. 
   
   “It was a lot to process, but you just have to forge ahead,” he reflected in a 2014 New York Times profile. 
   
   He completed residencies at New York University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in numerous medical specialties — oncology, nephrology, hematology and cardiology — but aesthetics, physical beauty, held him in rapture. He completed his dermatology residency at the University of Miami. 
   
   “The passing of Fredric Brandt, M.D., is tragic,” said Dr. Robert S. Kirsner, interim chairman of the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “He was part of our voluntary faculty for years and taught a generation of dermatologists, including trainees in Miami and practicing physicians worldwide, about aesthetics. ... He will be missed. However, through his teaching and innovation, his legacy will live on.” 
   
   In 1982, Brandt opened his dermatology practice in Coral Gables where he partnered with the manufacturers of leading injectables like Dysport, Restylane and Cosmoderm to run clinical trials at his Dermatology Research Institute on Ponce de Leon Boulevard. There, he worked to clear new technologies with the Food and Drug Administration. 
   
   By 1989, Brandt, who authored 10 Minutes 10 Years: Your Definitive Guide to a Beautiful and Youthful Appearance and Age-Less: The Definitive Guide to Botox, Lasers, Peels and Other Solutions for Flawless Skin, opened a New York City practice. Three years later, he created a popular skin care line, Dr. Brandt Skin Care. 
   
   In that realm, Brandt became international as his lines were sold at Sephora and 40 countries outside of the United States. He hosted the SiriusXM radio show, Ask Dr. Brandt. 
   
   In 2013, Brandt released his most recent anti-aging lines, DNA and XYY. “My DNA (do not age) line of anti-aging products truly represents the next frontier of anti-aging.…” They “prevent future aging by teaching skin to act young at the cellular level,” he said in a 2013 Miami Herald feature. 
   
   Said Jean Godfrey June, editor of Lucky, in an obituary released by the doctor’s publicist: “This was a brilliant man at the uncontested top of one of the most difficult and competitive professions, who took the crude science and turned it into something so refined, so subtle and so beautiful that it transformed literally thousands of lives.” 
   
   But behind the beauty, apparently there was pain, masked by Brandt’s upbeat public demeanor. He sang show tunes in his office for his patients. He adored comedienne Phyllis Diller. He was an avid art collector who championed the works of Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Anish Kapoor. He was his own biggest customer, frequently injecting himself with Botox. 
   
   “Everybody wants to have radiant skin,” he said in a 2003 Miami Herald story. 
   
   Brandt remarked in a 2014 New York Times profile that his goal was to “restore a face to harmony.” His skin care regiment for Madonna’s translucent skin was oft-commented upon, including by the singer. “If I have nice skin, I owe a lot to him,” she once said in an email to the Times. 
   
   “Fred was as sweet as he was brilliant,” said Tara Gilani, South Florida entertainment and fashion Trend Tracker reporter with CBS4. “He loved his clients, his friends and his dogs. ... I was happy to bump into him on Jan. 23 at a Humane Society of Miami fundraiser. He was kind and complimentary, as always. I’m glad I got to hug him that night.” 
   
   In fact, he was so loved by his patients, a group of eight tapped into Brandt’s love of show tunes and performed a musical Lamb wrote for the doctor’s 60th birthday. 
   
   “Dr. Brandt: The Musical,” Lamb said through tears. “We got about seven or eight of his patients and we wore suits and top hats and did a musical in his office. Parodies of Broadway shows. One of the songs was I Could Have Waited All Day to the tune of I Could Have Danced All Night — because when you would go to his office you could expect to wait two hours. We used Hello, Dolly! for the way he greeted people. 
   
   “Besides being an innovative and great doctor, he was just the nicest guy,” Lamb added. “My mom and I were clients of his since the late-’80s and he did a lot of innovative and experimental things on my mom. She passed away two years ago with pneumonia but when she was in the hospital she asked that we bring her Dr. Brandt products to her to put on her skin.” 
   
   As to the circumstances of his death, “it almost doesn’t matter, the other stuff,” Lamb said. “The fact is, we lost a great guy.” 
   
   Brandt is survived by his brother, Paul, and the dogs he cherished — Benji, Surya and Tyler. 
   
   Miami Herald staff writer Chuck Rabin contributed to this report. ||||| Dr. Fredric Brandt, a celebrity dermatologist once called the “Baron of Botox” by W magazine, died Sunday at his home in Coconut Grove, Fla. He was 65. 
   
   Frederica Burden, a spokeswoman for the Miami police, said the cause was suicide. 
   
   Susan Biegacz, a publicist for Dr. Brandt, said he had been dealing with depression for some time and had recently been “devastated” by what is widely believed to be a parody of him on the Tina Fey comedy series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” presented by Netflix. 
   
   On the show, Martin Short portrays Dr. Sidney Grant, a wispy-haired plastic surgeon whose pneumatic features suggest experiments with Botox and facial fillers run amok. 
   
   With his own wispy blond locks and pneumatic features, Dr. Brandt was a walking commentary on age-defying treatments and the products that have flooded the market since they were introduced as medical means of treating facial wasting among AIDS patients, and that he always tried first on himself. ||||| Tina Fey's New Show Is 'Not Why Dr. Brandt Committed Suicide': Source 
   
   My heart is breaking for the loss of Dr. Fredric Brandt. My friend. You will be missed forever and in my heart even longer. — Kelly Ripa (@KellyRipa) April 6, 2015 
   
   Dr. Brandt was one of the sweetest, nicest, most generous people I have had the good fortune to meet & work with. He will be sorely missed. — Joy Behar (@JoyVBehar) April 6, 2015 
   
   Celebrity Dermatologist Fredric Brandt Found Dead in His Home 
   
   Although celebrity dermatologist Dr. Fredric Brandt had been upset about comparisons to a character on Tina Fey 's Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, the show did not cause his apparent suicide Sunday, a source tells PEOPLE."He was depressed," the source close to Brandt says. "Did the show upset him? Yes. It was a mean characterization. He was a human being, no one would like that. It was making fun of him for the way he looked and it was mean and it was bullying. It was an illness, he suffered from depression. He always seemed like the life of the party, he would sing and rap his way through the day.""It wasn't the only thing troubling him, it was just one factor," the source adds. "It definitely hurt him. He was absolutely upset, who would want that? But that was not why he committed suicide. But it didn't help."In Kimmy Schmidt, released in March, Jane Krakowski's character Jacqueline Voorhees is a frequent client of plastic surgeon Dr. Grant (pronounced "Franff"), played by Martin Short , and the script ridicules his eccentric behavior and appearance."He was the nicest, kindest man alive, and they poke fun of him? Why? Because he looks different," the source tells PEOPLE. "Does Tina Fey teach her daughter to make fun of people? I don't think so. As a mother, I wonder if that's what she teaches her daughter. If someone looks different from you, do you make fun of them?"Another source confirms Brandt was "definitely hurt" by the characterization, and the dermatologist had told the source, "It wasn't nice, what they did."Fey, Netflix and Short have not yet returned requests for comment.Celebrities like Kelly Ripa and Joy Behar have Tweeted about the loss of Dr. Brandt.
target: – Dr. Fredric Brandt "was a huge pioneer" when it came to Botox and other anti-aging techniques, a fellow dermatologist says. In fact, he was once called the "Baron of Botox," and he boasted such celebrity clients as Madonna and Kelly Ripa. But on Sunday the 65-year-old died of an apparent suicide at his Florida home; a publicist tells the New York Times that he'd not only been struggling with depression, but was "devastated" by an apparent parody of him on Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt. Martin Short played a character on the Netflix series who looks similar to Brandt, with features that make it seem the fictional doctor has been using Botox to excess on himself. Brandt was known for experimenting on himself before trying a new treatment on patients. Brandt was found hanged in his garage, the Miami Herald reports. Multiple sources who talked to People agree the show hurt him, but one says not to blame Short's character (Dr. Grant, pronounced Franff) for Brandt's death. "Did the show upset him? Yes. He was a human being, no one would like that. It was making fun of him for the way he looked and it was mean and it was bullying," the source says. But "it wasn't the only thing troubling him, it was just one factor. But that was not why he committed suicide. But it didn't help." The source blames the "illness" of depression. Meanwhile, Allure's editor remembers Brandt's contributions: "When he came into dermatology it was people treating sunspots and removing moles. Suddenly there were all these new substances and techniques that altered our relationship to age and aging, and he was at the absolute forefront of that."