MARITAL STATUS
Professions Actor , Screenwriter , Director more
Birth name Kaddour Merad
Nicknames Kadour Merrad, Kad
Nationalities French, Algerian
Birth March 27, 1964 (Sidi Bel Abbes – Algeria)
BIOGRAPHY
Kad, whose real name is Kaddour Merad, began his artistic career as a teenager, as a singer and drummer in several rock groups. After a few odd jobs, he distinguished himself at Club Med in the Gigolo brothers comedy troupe , then launched into the theater where, under the direction of Jacqueline Duc , he played the classical repertoire ( Le Misanthrope , Andromaque ,…) . In 1991, Kad became a host on the Parisian rock radio station Oui FM, at the same time as a certain Olivier (real name Olivier Baroux). A year later, the two men formed the comedy duo Kad and Olivier and presented the show Rock’n’roll circus . They continued their collaboration on television, with the help of Jean-Luc Delarue , then presented, from 1999 to 2001, the program La Grosse emission on the cable channel Comédie!.
Kad gradually became familiar with the seventh art: he was initially content with appearances ( La Grande vie , Le Pharmacien de garde , La Beuze , Rien que du bonheur ) until the filmmaker Christophe Barratier entrusted him with an important role in 2003 in Les Choristes , a touching dramatic comedy applauded by the whole of France. The actor plays the pawn Chabert, authoritarian but benevolent. Not forgetting comedy, the actor regularly meets up with his sidekick Olivier . Together, the two accomplices star in the detective film pastiche But Who Killed Pamela Rose? (2003), before playing two geniuses in the comedy Iznogoud (2005) based on the famous comic strip by René Goscinny . The two friends teamed up again in 2006, and starred in the science fiction comedy A Ticket to Space .
In just a few years, Kad Merad has become one of the sure values of French cinema, where he carries around with contagious good humor the image of the ideal good friend. His change of register with I’m fine, don’t worry (2006), where he plays a moving father, paid off: he won the César for Best Supporting Role. Highly acclaimed, he made feature films at a steady pace, appearing in 2007 in the credits of the comedies La Tête de Maman , Pur weekend and 3 Amis . The same year, he played in Ce soir, je dors chez toi , the first production of his old accomplice Olivier. And now, by agreeing to play in Dany Boon ‘s second film , Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis , Kad’s life and career are completely turned upside down. The film breaks records by displaying more than twenty million admissions.
If Kad knows how to make people laugh, he also knows how to touch the audience and proves it once again with Faubourg 36 (2008), a dramatic and musical comedy in which he appears as an unemployed worker, and which marks his second collaboration with Christophe Barratier . At the same time, the actor continued his comedies in 2009 with Safari by Olivier Baroux , Le Petit Nicolas , based on the famous stories of Goscinny and RTT . A register that Kad Merad continued to explore the following year, appearing as a Catholic cop in Protect and Serve , as a car dealer hiding his origins in and as an eccentric super-villain in the animated film Megamind. But the actor also does not hesitate to explore less light roles, and thus embodies Jean Reno
‘s mafia rival in the dark thriller L’Immortel and in 2011 joined the prestigious casting of the drama based on the work of Marcel Pagnol , The Well Digger’s Daughter . He plays the touching Felipe, worker for Daniel Auteuil (who directed the film) and lover of young Astrid Berges-Frisbey . The same year, he tried his hand at directing with a comedy entitled Monsieur Papa , in which he also played the leading role. Kad Merad repeats the experience by directing But who killed Pamela Rose again? , a sequel to Eric Lartigau’s film (2002), in which he collaborates with his lifelong accomplice, Olivier Baroux. Kad Merad then reunites with his friend Xavier Giannoli whom he met for the first time in 1996, during the short film Dialogue at the Summit . The director offered him the leading role in his film Superstar (2012), a dramatic comedy in which he shared the screen with Cécile de France . The actor continues with another project, playing alongside Benoît Poelvoorde in The Big Bad Wolf , signed Nicolas and Bruno, a contemporary adaptation of the traditional tale The Three Little Pigs . Alternating comedies not meeting with success ( We marched on Bangkok ,
We wanted to smash everything ) and big hits in theaters ( Superchondriaque , Bis , Les Vacances du Petit Nicolas ), Kad Merad delivered in 2016 a project that is particularly close to his heart and for which he is both in front of and behind the camera: Marseille , tender comedy about the (re)discovery of one’s roots also carried by Patrick Bosso and taking place in the very cinematographic city of Marseille. At the same time, the actor leaves comedy aside and plays the main role in the political series Baron Noir , which has three seasons.
If his favorite genre remains comedy, as his performances in Brillantissime , Le Gendre de ma vie , Le Doudou , Just a Gigolo , A beautiful team and The Year of the Shark testify, Kad Merad also tastes darker registers, for example by playing a disillusioned violinist in La Mélodie , a hard-living crook in Comme des rois or even a professor seeking to put on a play with inmates in A Triumph . On the series side, he takes on the character of judge played by Bryan Cranston in Your Honor for its French adaptation: A Man of Honor .
