Jamel Debbouze lost his hand and the use of his right arm in a tragic accident in Trappes, at the age of 14. A drama on which he has already managed to confide in recent years …
Jamel Debbouze is this Sunday evening the guest of Laurent Delahousse, on the occasion of the upcoming release of the film “The New Toy”. Alongside Daniel Auteuil on France 2, to whom he plays the role in the film, the actor will come back to the genesis of this remake of the cult work by Francis Veber, “The Toy”, with Pierre Richard in the title role. . During his previous appearances on television to promote the film, such as on France 5 last week, Jamel Debbouze agreed to talk humorously about his right arm disabled following an accident, at the age of 14.
While trying to cross a railway track in Trappes on January 17, 1990, Jamel Debbouze was hit by a train which severed his hand. He will then lose the use of his right arm and a friend: Jean-Paul Admette, the son of singer Michel Admette, who will not survive the tragedy.
If he generally remains very discreet about this incident, the comedian, actor and producer did not hesitate to mention it in several more intimate interviews, but also in the program “Au tableau !!!” in 2018. “I went out late when I shouldn’t have gone out late. I found myself on the platform of a train station. I wanted to save some time. I saw the bus go by. And I I crossed the rails in the middle of the night without looking, either to the left or to the right”.
Born on June 18, 1975 in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, Jamel Debbouze grew up in a modest family of Moroccan origin with six children in the 18th arrondissement, then in Trappes, in the Paris suburbs. Dissipated student according to the various biographical elements that have been reported, he found his voice by discovering the theater and entered the French improvisation league, where he excelled as a teenager. He has been married since May 8, 2008 to Mélissa Theuriau with whom he has a son, Léon Ali Debbouze and a daughter, Lila Debbouze.
In 1995, Jamel Debbouze was called up for his comedic talents on Radio Nova where he was in charge of daily chronicles. He then worked on Paris Première, then was approached in 1997 by Canal where he created Le Cinéma de Jamel for the program Nulle Part Ailleurs. Jamel Debbouze knows how to play with his small size and his cheeky and babbling Parisian titi side, to the point of quickly becoming popular. He nevertheless won his stripes as a television actor in the H series from 1998 to 2001, still on Canal. He continued in 1999 with a first one-man show entitled Jamel en scène, which he performed with great success for two years.
After several short films (Blue Stones of the Desert by Nabil Ayouch, 1992), Jamel Debbouze was finally engaged in 1996 in a first feature: Les Deux papas et la mère by Jean-Marc Longval. He was then chosen by Laurent Bouhnik to play in Zonzon in 1998, but it was the role of Youssef in The Sky, the Birds and… Your Mother by Djamel Bensalah (1999) which opened the doors of cinema to him and in which he notably plays alongside Lorant Deutsch.
Thanks to this film and his growing notoriety acquired on television, Jamel Debbouze was spotted by Jean-Pierre Jeunet to play the lunar grocer’s clerk in Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain. The young actor triumphs shortly after in Asterix and Obelix: mission Cléôpatre by Alain Chabat (2002) where he lends his features to a memorable Numérobis and manages to steal the show from Gérard Depardieu, Christian Clavier, Monica Bellucci or even Gérard Darmon . The feature film is a historic triumph which brings together more than 14 million spectators and is partly worth to Jamel to appear in the first place of the highest paid French personalities of the year 2002 with 2.12 million euros in income.
Paradoxically, Jamel Debbouze does not take advantage of this state of grace and prefers to return to the stage rather than chain the shootings. He also embarked on two major projects: the construction of studios in Morocco and the production of the film Indigènes by Rachid Bouchareb. Luc Besson, however, managed to convince him to play his first big role in the cinema in Angel-A in 2005. In 2012 he played again with Alain Chabat in Sur la piste du Marsupilami. The following year, he played the young Hassan in La Marche by Nabil Ben Yadir, notably alongside Charlotte Le Bon and Olivier Gourmet, a film inspired by the “March for equality and against racism” which was held between October and December 1983.
In 2014, Jamel Debbouzze made his directing debut with Why Did I (Not) Eat My Father?, an animated film in which he directed his wife, Mélissa Theuriau. Since then, he alternates projects in the cinema, on stage and on television, but also at the microphone of certain large animation productions. We saw him in particular in La Vache in 2016, Alad’2 in 2018 and heard in 2019 in Toy Story 4 (Ducky) or the Lion King (Timon), when he starred with Gilles Lellouche in the film Until ‘Here, everything is fine.
