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gilbert gottfried

Gilbert Gottfried in 2016.

Gilbert Gottfried was a legendary stand-up comic, who somehow managed to pull off bizarre, even crude humor with a sense of lighthearted charm. He also appeared in countless films and TV shows as an actor, including “Saturday Night Live,” “Beverly Hills Cop II” and more recently “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

But for many ’90s kids (myself included) he was quite simply the one, the only … Iago.



Gottfried brought a wisecracking, chaotic Disney parrot to life in a way that no one else could. In fact, fellow “Aladdin” actor Jonathan Freeman credited Gottfried for bringing out his best rendition of the movie’s sinister villain, Jafar.

“My performance was much improved by having had Gilbert as the parrot because I didn’t have to be psychotic. I could let him be psychotic,” Freeman said in an interview for Theater Mania.

And while nearly everyone on the planet might know about Gottfried’s Iago, they might not know how his beloved character helped one father connect once again with his autistic son.

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