Gad Elmaleh Quotes

"Journalists ask me, 'Why don't you ever talk about sex in your performances?' True, I don't talk about sex - not in my personal life and not in my professional life. This is modesty."

"I don't feel any need to play the role of the clown. In my private life I take a break from humor."

"If you are not on TV, you don't really exist. I want to bring my comedy to the world and tell my story to a bigger audience."

"After New York, Chicago is my favorite city. It's just this great mix of Europe and America. The friends I have there are smart and witty and fun."

"Everywhere I go in America, when they learn I'm from France, the first thing they ask me is if I'm a huge Jerry Lewis fan. I've never been able to figure that out."

"I like to do comedy. It's my real passion. I want to make people laugh."

"Comedy in America is very serious. Either they laugh, or they don't."

"There were two things I used to do to seduce girls: jokes and music. Since I'm not a great pianist, jokes were my thing."

"My name, my origins, my background and my experiences are what leveraged my success. The angle of the immigrant, through which I examined the reality in France, distinguished me."

"Actually, I don't like dogs. I'm from Morocco, and people there don't like animals."

"I go to New York to see live shows, not movies."

"My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view."

"America is where standup comedy was born. It's the standard. So you want to go and do your job where this is the mecca of what you do."

"It's liberating to perform in another language. There are some subjects I would never talk about in French, where they see me as a public figure, that I talk about in English."

"I did movies because I was flattered and for money and because I wanted to kiss Sophie Marceau."

"It's only fitting that a Jewish comic makes his Just for Laughs anglo debut in a church, right?"

"I love the Comedy Cellar. The audience has no expectations because they don't know me. It's great. It's only winning - if I bomb, they just say, 'Oh, the French guy sucks.' But if I do well, then they remember me."

"I talk about my dad and the American dream, and I just want to say to Americans how fascinated we are by America. We would love Americans to look at the rest of the world that way sometimes."

"I was in a steak house once, and someone proposed. I was so embarrassed. The woman started crying, and I thought, 'She was just proposed to in a steak house - I'd be crying, too.'"

"When Americans, who have no idea who I am, laugh at my jokes, it's exactly the same if someone loves you even if you're not rich and famous."

"There's so many funny things to say about being with Charlotte. I've worked on a few bits about it - not to be indiscreet but because the shock of culture and values is so interesting."

"That's only in America. We don't have French doors in France."

"If I were bombing with my jokes in English, I would go back to France. Maybe do that mime thing."

"In America, going on a date is really more like 'interview night.' You have to give your resume."

"I want to talk to the audience. This is what I've been doing in my work in French forever - talking about small things becoming big problems. I notice all the details, all the tiny little things."

"In France, I'm not going to say the audience will laugh for nothing, but you could compare the response I get to the response Louis CK or Chris Rock would get if they go up in a club in Denver tonight."

"When they don't know you, when you don't have credits and they're thinking, 'I don't know this French guy,' your first five minutes are trying to seduce them, trying to get them on your side. And it's not easy."

"It's a good time to be here in America. You feel that people just want to be together and release the pressure and laugh."

"It's a time where every country and every human should be united. I mean, every country has its problems."

"Americans don't like puns and plays on words, which is totally opposite in the comedy world to France or even Italy and Germany."