Ary Abittan

Ary Abittan is a French actor and humorist. He is particularly known for his role in Serial (Bad) Weddings.

Ary Abittan was born on January 31, 1974, in Paris. He comes from a Sephardic Jewish (Maghrebi Jewish) family. His father is from Morocco and his mother from Tunisia. He spent part of his childhood between Garges-lès-Gonesse and Sarcelles. At age 19, he became a taxi driver, like his father, an activity that allowed him to finance his first theater lessons.^[1]

In 1993, Ary Abittan wrote (in parallel of theater lessons) his first sketches and then performed on stage since 1994 In 2007, he took the lead role in a play, Happy Hanukah, which Jean-Luc Moreau directed. The same year, he plays the main role during three seasons of Nos années pension, broadcast on France 2.

In 2012, he plays in Dépression et des potes of Arnaud Lemort. The same year, he made his first participation in Marrakech du rire. In 2014, he plays in Serial (Bad) Weddings with Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby by Philippe de Chauveron.

On October 30, 2021, a 23-year-old woman with whom Abittan had been in a relationship filed a complaint alleging that he had raped her at his home in Paris that same day. The next day, Abittan was taken into custody^[2]. Forty-eight hours later, Abittan was charged with rape, as the magistrate deemed the evidence gathered by investigators to be serious and consistent^[3], including vaginal and anal injuries observed during a medical examination and blood found on a bath towel seized from Abittan's home^[4][5][6][7]. He was released under judicial supervision and denied the allegation.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13]} In July 2023 the investigating judges changed his status to that of témoin assisté (assisted witness) and closed the judicial investigation, noting that new elements had weakened the probative value of the initial evidence.^[14][15]

On 3 April 2024, the Paris public prosecutor’s office announced that Abittan had been granted a non-lieu in the case, a decision that the complainant appealed.^[16][17][18] The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the non-lieu on 30 January 2025, effectively ending the criminal proceedings; Abittan subsequently resumed touring, although some of his performances have been met with protests from feminist activists.^[16][19][20] In December 2025, feminist campaigners disrupted one of his shows in Paris, an incident that drew international coverage when France's first lady Brigitte Macron was filmed backstage using a slur to describe the protesters while speaking with Abittan^[21][22]. Macron's unwitting help, the Abittan case has reignited the debate about the French justice system's inability to deal effectively with sexual violence^{[23][24][25][26][27][28]}.

• Ary Abittan at IMDb