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Gilbert Gottfried (born February 28, 1955, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American stand-up comedian and actor noted for his squint, his grating voice, his Brooklyn accent and his tendency to shout at the top of his lungs. Although he has a rather clean image on Hollywood Squares (perhaps most notably his "You Fool!!" episode), his stand up routines and appearances on The Howard Stern Show (for bits of racially explicit satire) are edgy and raunchy.
He has played numerous roles in film and television, perhaps most notably voicing the parrot Iago in Disney's Aladdin (1992) and co-starring in the Problem Child movies (1990 and 1991). Since 2000, he has also been the voice of the duck in the AFLAC commercials and of Digit in the math-mystery cartoon Cyberchase on PBS Kids GO!. Gottfried makes regular appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and appeared in the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats, which included footage of Gottfried's legendary re-telling in 2001 of the dirty joke at a Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner just three weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks: He had initially touched on the sensitive topic, joking that he had intended to catch a plane to California, but couldn't get a direct flight because "they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first." As audience members responded with gasps and cries of "too soon!", he launched into a version of the Aristocrats joke that brought down the house and became the highlight of the evening. The occasion is now widely regarded as an important and decisive moment in stand-up comedy. He was also in many seasons of The Hollywood Squares show where he started the shows best known catch phrase "You Fool!". This was said repetitively in response to a large number questions being missed in a row.
From 1980 to 1981, he was a cast member of the NBC late night series Saturday Night Live. |
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