FILE — Comedian Gilbert Gottfried attends the Tribeca Film Festival opening night world premiere of “Love, Gilda,” in New York on April 18, 2018. Gottfried’s publicist and longtime friend Glenn Schwartz said Gottfried, an actor and legendary standup comic known for his abrasive voice and crude jokes, died Tuesday, April 12, 2022. He was 67. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
FILE — Gilbert Gottfried performs at the Comedy Central “Roast of Roseanne” in Los Angeles on Aug. 4, 2012. Gottfried’s publicist and longtime friend Glenn Schwartz said Gottfried, an actor and legendary standup comic known for his abrasive voice and crude jokes, died Tuesday, April 12, 2022. He was 67. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, File)
Updated 4/12/2022 3:06 PM
LOS ANGELES — Gilbert Gottfried, the actor and legendary standup comic known for his raw, scorched voice and crude jokes, has died. He was 67.
Gottfried died from recurrent ventricular tachycardia due to myotonic dystrophy type II, a disorder that affects the heart, his publicist and longtime friend Glenn Schwartz said in a statement.
Gottfried was a fiercely independent and intentionally bizarre comedian’s comedian, as likely to clear a room with anti-comedy as he was to kill with his jokes.
He first came to national attention with frequent appearances on MTV in its early days and with a brief stint in the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in the 1980s.
Gottfried also did frequent voice work for children’s television and movies, most famously playing the parrot Iago in Disney’s “Aladdin.”
“Gilbert’s brand of humor was brash, shocking and frequently offensive, but the man behind the jokes was anything but,” Gottfried’s friend and podcast co-host Frank Santopadre said in a statement. “Those who loved and him were fortunate enough to share his orbit knew a person who was sweet, sensitive, surprisingly shy and filled with a childlike sense of playfulness and wonder.”
