Life and Career
Chabat was born in Oran, French Algeria. He is Jewish.
His media career began in 1987 when he founded the comedy group "Les Nuls" (The Dummies) with Bruno Carette, Chantal Lauby and Dominique Farrugia. Les Nuls' first appearance on French television, on the subscriber channel Canal Plus, was a sci-fi spoof entitled Objectif Nul (a word play with Objectif Lune, the French title of the comic album Destination Moon, one of The Adventures of Tintin). The show shares striking similarities with the British TV series Red Dwarf, although both shows were released at roughly the same time and it is unlikely one influenced the other.
Both as a member of Les Nuls (in La Cité de la Peur) and in his solo efforts (including Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, in which he both directed and acted), Chabat is one of the few French comedians who has managed to successfully emulate the heavily referential, pop-culture-based writing style of the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker trio and adapt it to the tastes of the French audience.
Chabat also voiced the title character in the French dubs of all three Shrek films, replacing Mike Myers. He won the César Award for Best Debut in 1998 for Didier.
He also acted in Happily Ever After (2004) and in Prête-moi ta main (2006) alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg. He played Napoleon Bonaparte in the 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
Read more about this topic: Alain Chabat
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Even though fathers, grandparents, siblings, memories of ancestors are important agents of socialization, our society focuses on the attributes and characteristics of mothers and teachers and gives them the ultimate responsibility for the child’s life chances.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)