Gad Elmaleh

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.

Morocco is completely alive for me because I spent about a third of my life there. The first few times I went back to Casablanca, I walked through the streets and remembered how years earlier I had walked those same streets and prayed that a miracle would happen and I would leave and become famous.

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

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.

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.

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.