His early routines focused on impressions of old time actors and celebrities, including Boris Karloff and Humphrey Bogart. His two sisters accompanied him, having thought the performances their brother did for the family were good enough for the stage and encouraged Gottfried to try it out.
Gottfried's first routine on stage was at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village, during one of its Hootenanny Night events, when he was fifteen. From Coney Island, the family moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, followed by Borough Park. It's like I kind of knew that even though I was never bar mitzvahed and we didn't follow the holidays, I knew that if the Nazis came back, I'd be in the same train coach with everyone else.' He was the younger brother of Karen and photographer Arlene Gottfried (1950–2017). We weren't that aware of the holidays or anything like that, but were aware of being Jewish. He was raised in a Jewish family but later said of his unusual upbringing, 'I ate pork. His father and grandfather ran the store, above which the family lived. Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried was born on February 28, 1955, in the Coney Island section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the son of homemaker Lillian Zimmerman and hardware store owner Max Gottfried.
