Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
Watch Live

National

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried has died

FILE - Comedian Gilbert Gottfried performs at a David Lynch Foundation Benefit for Veterans with PTSD on April 30, 2016, in New York. 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.
Scott Roth
/
Invision/Associated Press
FILE - Comedian Gilbert Gottfried performs at a David Lynch Foundation Benefit for Veterans with PTSD on April 30, 2016, in New York. 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.

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried has died at 67. A post on his verified Twitter feed says he died following a long illness.

Gottfried died from recurrent ventricular tachycardia due to myotonic dystrophy type II, a disorder that affects the heart, according to a statement by his publicist and longtime friend Glenn Schwartz to the Associated Press.

There was always a glint in his eye when Gottfried was just about to tell an edgy joke, for example this one from his Just for Laughs set in 2015: "Let me tell you when I was a little boy if my father bought me a baseball I would've made out with him ... and I don't want to tell you what I would've done for a G.I Joe."

Advertisement

Whether it was natural disasters or terrorist attacks, the phrase "too soon" was never a part of his vocabulary as Gottfried told NPR in 2011.

"There's that old saying, tragedy plus time equals comedy. And I always say like, well, why wait?"

Gottfired was also an actor, including lending his unique voice to Disney's Aladdin.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Advertisement