An outspoken comic who once was fired as the voice of the duck mascot for insurance giant Aflac is preparing to entertain an audience in Ocala.
Gilbert Gottfried, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member who also was lauded for his portrayal of business manager Sidney Bernstein in the 1987 hit movie “Beverly Hills Cop II” alongside Eddie Murphy, will be onstage at the Reilly Arts Center on April 17. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. show went on sale for members on Tuesday and will be available for the general public beginning Friday, Jan. 31 at 10 a.m.
Gottfried started doing stand-up comedy at the age of 15 during open-mike nights in New York City. He eventually become known as the “comedian’s comedian” and got his first big break on “SNL” in 1980. A few years later he was hired by MTV for a series of comedic promos for the new music channel, which then led to television appearances on “The Cosby Show” and “Late Night with David Letterman.”
Gottfried was lauded for his role in “Beverly Hills Cop II,” with one critic claiming that he stole the movie “with a single scene.” He went on to become known as the king of quirky movie and television roles and appeared in popular movies “Problem Child,” “Problem Child II,” “Look Who’s Talking II” and “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.”
Gottfried also became one of the most recognizable voiceover talents. His voice could be heard in a variety of commercials, cartoons, TV shows and movies, including as the popular duck in the Aflac insurance commercials, as the voice of Digit in the PBS Series “Cyberchase,” on the Comedy Central series “The Annoying Orange,” as the voice of the horse on “Family Guy” and Abraham Lincoln in “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” among others.
Gottfried is no stranger to controversy, having made a multitude of masturbation jokes during the 1991 Emmy Awards in reference to the arrest of Paul Reubens of “Pee-wee Herman” fame. He was highly criticized for making 9/11 jokes just three weeks after the terrorist attack while roasting Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner. And in March 2011 he made a series of jokes on his Twitter account about the deadly Japan earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 20,000 people. Those jokes cost him his role with Aflac, which does about 75 percent of its business in Japan.
