Gad Elmaleh

Gad Elmaleh (born 19 April 1971) is a Moroccan-Canadian stand-up comedian and actor. Best known in the French-speaking world, he has notably achieved fame in France, Morocco, and the United States. He has starred in several feature films, including Coco, Priceless, La Doublure and Midnight in Paris. Voted the funniest person in France, he was named knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the Minister of Culture and knight of the National Order of Quebec. He was born and raised in Casablanca to a Moroccan Sephardic Jewish family, and his family emigrated from Morocco to Canada when he was 17. In 1992, Elmaleh moved to Paris to study drama at Cours Florent under the tutelage of Isabelle Nanty.

His first one-man show Decalages, performed at the Palais des glaces in 1997, was autobiographical. His fame further increased with the success of his second one-man show, La Vie Normale, his first time performing at the Olympia. His L'autre c'est moi (2005) contains more improvisation and interaction with the public, and he has been credited with bringing the American stand-up style to France. On 6 January 2007 he was voted the funniest man of the year by TF1 viewers, and on 15 July 2007 he premiered his fifth one-man show, Papa est en haut, in Montreal as part of the Just for Laughs festival. In 2013 he appeared on Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and is often called the Seinfeld of France.

In 2015 Elmaleh began an American tour entitled Oh My Gad and moved to New York City. On a 15 December 2016 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he appeared as the show's stand-up act. His French stand-up special Gad Gone Wild was filmed in Montreal, Canada, and released on Netflix on 24 January 2017, with an English language special released in March 2018. As an actor, he played Francois Pignon in La Doublure (2005), appeared opposite Audrey Tautou in Priceless (2006), and in 2009 released the film Coco, which he directed, wrote and starred in. In 2011 he had a small role in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.