Alain Yves Stéphane Chabat (born November 24, 1958) is a French actor, comedian, voice actor, director, screenwriter and TV host.
Born in a Toshavim Jewish family in Oran, then-French Algeria, he settled in France with his family in 1963. He first wanted to be a comic book artist, then shifted to radio. He worked his way up on the RMC radio channel from stringer jobs to broadcasting host, and from there the founder of the TV channel Canal+ Pierre Lescure hired him.
At Canal+, he gained fame after founding the comedy group "Les Nuls" (The Dummies) with Bruno Carette, Chantal Lauby and Dominique Farrugia in the late 1980s. His parodic and nonsensical comedy writing has been largely inspired by the group he's a huge fan of — Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, and went on to become a key component of "L'esprit Canal" (the "Canal Spirit"), Canal+'s irreverent brand of humor. Les Nuls disbanded in 1992, but still ended up reunited with great success on the big screen with La Cité de la peur in 1994, which is still considered as one of the best French absurd comedies ever made.
Along with his acting and voice acting career (he is the French voice of Shrek, among others), he went on to become a commercially successful director, most famously with Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra. He also kept working for Canal+, such as when he hosted the short-lived humoristic Game Show Burger Quiz in the early 2000s, or Le Late avec Alain Chabat since 2022.
Works he has appeared in include:
- La classe américaine - Le Grand Détournement (1993) as Gorge Profonde (Deep Throat)
- La Cité de la peur (1994) as Serge Karamazov / the hammer & sickle killer / Jacques (also written by him)
- French Twist (1995) as Laurent
- Didier (1997) as Didier (also directed and written by him)
- Quest for Camelot (1998) as Devon & Cornwall (French dub)
- The Taste of Others (2000) as Bruno Deschamps
- Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) as Julius Caesar (also directed and wrote)
- Shrek (2001 - 2010) as Shrek (French dub)
- RRRrrr!!! (2004) as Pierre the medicine man (also directed and wrote)
- Avez-vous déjà vu... ? (2006) as the Narrator
- Kaamelott (2007) as the Duke of Aquitania
- Kaamelott: Premier Volet (2021)
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) as the living wax figure of Napoléon Bonaparte
- A Thousand Words (2012) as Christian Léger de la Touffe
- HOUBA! On the Trail of the Marsupilami (2012) as Dan Geraldo (also directed and wrote)
- Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) as Silas (French dub)
- Mood Indigo (2013) as Jules Gouffé
- Asterix: The Mansions of the Gods (2014) as Senator Prospectus (French voice)
- Reality (2014) as Jason Tantra
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) as Bob the pirate
- Incredible But True (2022) as Alain
- Smoking Causes Coughing (2022) as Chief Didier
- Asterix animated series based off The Big Fight for Netflix (TBA, directed)
Tropes about his works:
- Descended Creator: He very frequently stars in the films that he directs.
- He Also Did: Along with his Les Nuls buddy Dominique Farrugia, he wrote the French dub of Wayne's World, which has received particular praise.
- Parody: The bread and butter of Les Nuls, and beyond in some of the things he wrote and/or directed. Les Nuls, much like Les Inconnus, parodied plenty of films, television shows and ads of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but with way more absurd.
- Parody Commercial: He did "Royal Rabbin", a famous parody of the 1980s dog food brand ad "Royal Canin" with the theme "Chi Mai" by Ennio Morricone playing, with himself as a rabbi running in the grass in slow motion like a happy dog.
