Gottfried's first comedy routine on stage was at
the Bitter End in
Greenwich Village during one of its Hootenanny Night events when he was 15 years old. His early routines focused on impressions of old time actors and celebrities, including
Boris Karloff and
Humphrey Bogart. From there, he worked the local comedy circuit and became known in the area as a "comedian's comedian", and started to perform edgier material when he became bored with his usual routines. One such incident occurred when Gottfried opened for
Belinda Carlisle, which was attended by younger girls and their mothers. Gottfried stated: "I tried doing my regular act for about 5 minutes, then I just launched into the filthiest stuff I could think of. And the next day, I got a call from my agent saying, 'Everybody there loved you,' which is show business talk for, 'You're fired. Gottfried's persona during
Saturday Night Live sketches was different from his later characterization: He rarely spoke in his trademark voice and never squinted. During his 12-episode stint, he did not get along with the writers and was rarely used in sketches. He played one recurring character named Leo Waxman (husband of
Denny Dillon's Pinky Waxman on the recurring talk show sketch "What's It All About?") and did two celebrity impersonations:
David Stockman and
Roman Polanski. In April 1987, Gottfried headlined a half-hour comedy special that aired as part of the
Cinemax Comedy Experiment series. Gottfried played Sidney Bernstein in
Beverly Hills Cop II, in which he reunited with friend and fellow
Saturday Night Live alumnus
Eddie Murphy. In August that same year, Gottfried made his debut appearance on
The Howard Stern Show. He went on to make over 100 appearances on the radio show over the next 25 years. That year, he also starred in the sitcom pilot ''Norman's Corner
, co-written by Larry David prior to creating Seinfeld''. He was a recurring guest star during the
Tom Bergeron era of
Hollywood Squares and became the center of attention in a bizarre episode that aired on October 1, 1999. In this episode, the two contestants made nine consecutive incorrect guesses, six of which were to be game-deciding questions asked to Gottfried. As the only remaining square, whoever captured him would have five squares and therefore win the game.
Penn Jillette, who was a guest alongside
Teller on the same episode, berated a contestant earlier for giving an incorrect guess by shouting, "You fool!". Gottfried himself began to use the phrase, with most of the other stars (even including Bergeron) eventually joining in with every successive wrong guess, beginning with the second question he was asked. As a result, it took the episode's entire half-hour to play only one game. The game only ended with the question "The word 'smog' comes from what two words?"; Gottfried correctly guessed "'smoke' and 'fog'", to Bergeron's joy. Appropriately, the episode became known as the "You Fool!" episode. Gottfried was temporarily fired from
Hollywood Squares after this incident, returning about a month later. In 2004,
Comedy Central featured Gottfried's stand-up material for ''
Shorties Watchin' Shorties''. Gottfried was part of an online advertising campaign for
Microsoft's
Office XP software, showing (in a series of animated
cartoons) that the
Clippy office assistant would be removed. In 2006, Gottfried topped the
Boston Phoenix's tongue-in-cheek list of the world's 100 Unsexiest Men. In April, he performed with the
University of Pennsylvania's
Mask and Wig Club in their annual Intercollegiate Comedy Festival. Also in 2006, he made an appearance on the ''
Let's Make a Deal portion of Gameshow Marathon (as a baby in a large high chair, he says "Hey Ricki, I think I need my diaper changed!"), and in the Dodge Viper in the big deal (where he tells the contestants "What were you thinking?!" because neither one picked it). He also guest-starred in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy as Santa Claus in the one-hour Christmas special. He voiced Rick Platypus in an episode of My Gym Partner's a Monkey'' entitled
"That Darn Platypus". He appeared as
Peter's horse in an episode of
Family Guy entitled "
Boys Do Cry", in which Peter is excited to learn that Gottfried is providing the voice of the horse. He also voiced himself in some episodes. He also guest-starred in
Hannah Montana as Barny Bittmen. In January 2009, Gottfried worked again with
David Faustino for an episode of Faustino's show
Star-ving. In 2011, Gottfried appeared in the episode "Lost Traveller" on
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Leo Gerber, a sarcastic computer professional working for the
NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit, which producer
Warren Leight said could become a recurring character. Gottfried read a section from the hit book
Fifty Shades of Grey in a June 2012 YouTube video, which was created with the aim of using his trademark voice to make fun of the book's graphic sexual content. In 2011, Gottfried published his only book
Rubber Balls and Liquor. He was also a commentator on
TruTV's ''
World's Dumbest...''. On May 28, 2014, Sideshow Network premiered ''Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast'', an interview podcast where Gottfried and his co-host
Frank Santopadre discussed classic films and talk to "
Hollywood legends and behind-the-scenes talents" who shaped Gottfried's childhood and influenced his comedy. His first guest was
Dick Cavett. His final guest was
Brenda Vaccaro in a two part episode released on April 25 and May 2, 2022. Gottfried was hospitalized a few hours after the episode's recording. Gottfried was the third contestant fired during
the fourteenth season of the
NBC reality show
The Celebrity Apprentice. In 2016, he played the "Pig Man" in a comedy / fantasy film titled
Abnormal Attraction. In 2017, he appeared as himself in
Episodes, where a contestant on a fictional TV endurance game show is penalized with "48 hours of Gilbert Gottfried". On June 10, 2018, Gottfried appeared in a special segment of
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver where, for UK viewers only, a segment about the UK's law restricting broadcast of debates from the
Houses of Parliament was replaced by 5 minutes of him reading "3-star Yelp reviews" along with host
John Oliver telling the audience "you brought this on yourself because of your stupid law." He returned on November 18, 2018, in the show's last episode of the year to read out extracts from the
Brexit agreement, again for UK viewers only. He had previously performed as "the real voice of
Jared Kushner" in dubbed film clips on the show. On July 31, 2019, Gottfried appeared as a guest in episode 170 of the
Angry Video Game Nerd. On January 10, 2022, he guest-starred as God in the penultimate episode of
Smiling Friends Season 1. On October 18, 2022, he appeared in the
Somebody Feed Phil Season 6 episode "
Croatia" in the "Joke for Max" segment on a video call with the show host
Philip Rosenthal where he tells a few jokes in honor of Phil's late father Max. Released in the same month,
The Paloni Show! Halloween Special includes a skit with Gottfried voicing an "apartment manager who doesn't want to deal with his tenants."
Podcast ''Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast
launched on June 1, 2014. GGACP'' was a long-form interview podcast and was hosted by not only Gottfried, but his friend and professional comedy writer
Frank Santopadre. Gottfried's wife Dara served as executive producer and it was recorded weekly until his death in 2022, with re-uploads of older episodes continuing afterwards in his honor. Its title ''Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast
is a reference to the 1957 black-and-white science fiction film The Amazing Colossal Man'', directed by
Bert I. Gordon. Gottfried's chaotic comedic riffing and Santopadre's earnest interviewing offered the show a style all its own.
Artistry and image Danny Gallagher of the
Dallas Observer wrote that "Gottfried has one of the most original formulas in the history of comedy," adding, "You don't just laugh at the punchline when Gilbert Gottfried tells a joke. You laugh at the setup. You laugh at his comments about the joke. You even laugh at the segues between his jokes." Eric Falwell wrote of his influence in
The Atlantic: "Gottfried's work as a stand-up shaped many comics today, whether they would say as much or not. He was a figure who ... pushed stand-up to move beyond the realm of the merely observational and create space for the absurd." In 2022, the
Jewish Journal named him one of "The Top 10 Jewish Reality TV Stars of All Time." Gottfried was best known for speaking in an exaggerated loud and grating voice, which was not his natural speaking voice. Mark Binneli of
Rolling Stone described Gottfried as a "squinting, squawking mass of contradictions", noting his status as "one of America's filthiest stand-ups" while simultaneously being "one of the most successful voice-over artists in children's entertainment". In a July 2012
op-ed for
CNN, he wrote, "I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old
picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'"
Controversies In 1991, at the
43rd Primetime Emmy Awards, Gottfried told a series of jokes in reference to
Paul Reubens' arrest for
masturbating in an adult theater, saying if "masturbation's a crime, I should be on death row." Viewers in the Eastern time zone saw the entire set live, but Fox censored the broadcast for the West Coast delay. Fox issued an apology, calling the jokes "irresponsible and insulting". and
Rolling Stone wrote that the monologue resulted in his
blacklisting. During his monologue at a
Friars Club roast of
Hugh Hefner, 3 weeks after the
September 11 attacks, Gottfried joked that he had intended to catch a plane, but could not get a direct flight because "they said they have to stop at the
Empire State Building first". This was one of the first public examples of
9/11 humor. Audience members responded with hisses and a cry of "too soon!". Gottfried later stated he thought "too soon" meant he did not take a long enough pause before the punchline. Realizing he had lost the audience "bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience", Gottfried abandoned his prepared remarks and launched into the famous
Aristocrats joke, which won back the audience.
Penn Jillette and
Paul Provenza used Gottfried's monologue as a segment in their 2005 film
The Aristocrats. On March 14, 2011, Gottfried
tweeted 12 jokes about the
earthquake disaster in Japan which had occurred three days before.
Aflac, which does 75% of its business in Japan, responded by dismissing Gottfried from voicing its mascot and announcing a casting call for his replacement, despite Gottfried later apologizing for his jokes. He was replaced by Daniel McKeague (who did an impression of Gottfried) on April 26. ==Personal life==