Gad Elmaleh is jet-lagged when he calls from his home in New York. The Morocco-born French standup and movie star flew in from Paris the night before. But you wouldn’t know it from listening to him. His passion—comedy—is a tonic whether he’s performing it or talking about it. Even, or especially, when it’s in his fourth language.

When his plane landed, he zipped from the airport to the Comedy Cellar. “This is the best place in town,” he says. “It’s really addictive. When we go there as comedians, we don’t want to go anywhere else. It’s great.”

The first time he tried standup was in Montreal, where he was a student at McGill University. Then he moved back to Paris and started performing in a culture where American-style standup wasn’t on the radar. “A long time ago, like, 20 years ago when I started to do standup comedy, I would have an entire show and an act and I would play it every night in a small theatre, which was obviously not sold-out in the first months, you know?” he says.

There still is no club system to speak of in France. Elmaleh says it’s because French comedians are “too pretentious”. “They don’t want to work out on their material in a small room for months and then go on-stage. I know some performers in Paris, they write their show and they tape it, like, one week later. Really? Don’t you think you’re gonna move things around and correct and adjust and craft? ‘No, it’s good.’ And they play the same show over and over again with not moving anything.”

He very quickly landed his first movie role, which helped him grow a following for his stage show. By his count, he’s done 30 films (including Midnight in Paris and The Adventures of Tintin) in two decades.

“I have to say I prefer comedy, I prefer to go on-stage and play and do the standup and do live shows,” he says. “I think cinema is okay but I get very bored on the set. It’s very, very boring to me.”

Easy to say when you’re playing arenas around Europe, when the rush of thousands of laughs comes back in a wave immediately. But he’s given that up for a new challenge in a new world—in North America, where most people don’t know him from Jacques.

“The experience now is crazy,” he says. “I was performing in a 12,000-seat arena this summer in Belgium and last night I performed at the Comedy Cellar in front of people who had no idea who I was. There were, like, 100 people, and it’s great and I like it and it’s a good challenge, but I’m basically starting over. I get excited again. It’s like a new girlfriend, no? A new wife, new girlfriend, new relationship. It’s spicy, it’s exciting. I get butterflies before going on-stage. I can’t believe when I make Americans laugh. I’m like, ‘Wow, they laughed at my jokes!’ That’s great, and it’s not even my first language.”

Not by a long shot. Elmaleh performed in French, Arabic, and He­brew before giving the new lingua franca, English, the old college try.

“I woke up one day and I said, ‘I wanna get excited,’ ” he says about his decision to conquer America. “It’s hard. Everyone was discouraging me. Everyone. Every comedian was like, ‘Don’t do this. It’s going to be too hard, stay in France.’ And I said, ‘No.’ It’s because it’s hard that I’m doing it.”

Gad Elmaleh plays the Vogue Theatre on Tuesday (September 6).