MUMBAI: Gilbert Gottfried, a stand-up comic with a screwy voice and a penchant for pushing boundaries with jokes about the September 11 attacks and the Japanese tsunami, has died at age 67, his family said on Tuesday. Gottfried, a former cast member on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and the voice of a sarcastic parrot in the animated Disney film Aladdin, suffered a long, unspecified illness.
Tributes poured in from other comic actors. “A wholly original comic, and an equally kind and humble guy behind the scenes,” MacFarlane said on Twitter. “He will be missed.” Jason Alexander, who played George on the television comedy Seinfeld, said on Twitter, “Gilbert Gottfried made me laugh at times when laughter did not come easily. What a gift.”
That style of humor also cost him a lucrative role as the Aflac duck in television commercials for the insurer, which severed ties with Gottfried after he made a series of jokes on Twitter about the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed 18,000 people in Japan.
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Born in Brooklyn, and rising up through the New York City stand-up scene, Gilbert Gottfried was known for edgy comedy that made some people squirm.
One of Gottfried’s best-known movie roles was as the voice of Iago, the loud-mouthed, sarcastic talking parrot of the evil Jafar in Disney’s 1992 animated film hit Aladdin.
Credit: The Indian Express
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