The vehicle carrying the former "Saturday Night Live" and "30 Rock" cast member and six others was involved in a six-vehicle accident on the turnpike near Cranbury Township at about 1 a.m. Saturday, Sgt. First Class Greg Williams told The Associated Press.

Williams said one person died in the crash that occurred in the northbound lanes of the turnpike near mile marker 71.5.

A spokesman at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey, says a patient named Tracy Morgan is in critical condition there.

There was no immediate word on other injuries from the accident.

Williams says two tractor-trailers, a sports utility vehicle and two cars, along with Morgan's limo bus, were involved in the accident. There is no immediate word on the cause of the pileup.

The 45-year-old New York City native joined "Saturday Night Live" in 1996 and was on the sketch-comedy program for seven years before leaving to star in "The Tracy Morgan Show" in 2003. That show lasted just one season. In 2006, Morgan found a long-running role in NBC's hit show "30 Rock," which was created by SNL co-star Tina Fey.

Morgan grew up fatherless, one of five siblings, in a blighted section of Brooklyn, where he helped raise and support the family.

He once called his gift for being funny "a defense mechanism" for his miserable circumstances.

As a teen he started doing comedy on the streets to supplement the family's welfare income.

In late 2010, Morgan had a kidney transplant.

The New Jersey Turnpike was closed for more than five hours after the crash and was reopened at about 6:30 a.m.