Bill Murray
Biography
Life Story
Bill Murray is an American actor, comedian, and writer. The fifth of nine children, he was born William James Murray in Wilmette, Illinois, to Lucille (Collins), a mailroom clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, who sold lumber. He is of Irish descent. Among his siblings are actors Brian Doyle-Murray, Joel Murray, and John Murray. He and most of his siblings worked as caddies, which paid his tuition to Loyola Academy, a Jesuit school. He played sports and did some acting while in that school, but in his words, mostly "screwed off." He enrolled at Regis College in Denver to study pre-med but dropped out after being arrested for marijuana possession. He then joined the National Lampoon Radio Hour with fellow members Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi. However, while those three became the original members of Saturday Night Live (1975), he joined Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell (1975), which premiered that same year. After that show failed, he later got the opportunity to join Saturday Night Live (1975), for which he earned his first Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series. He later went on to star in comedy films, including Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Tootsie (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989), Scrooged (1988), What About Bob? (1991), and Groundhog Day (1993). He also co-directed Quick Change (1990). Murray garnered additional critical acclaim later in his career, starring in Lost in Translation (2003), which earned him a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He also received Golden Globe nominations for his roles in Ghostbusters, Rushmore (1998), Hyde Park on Hudson (2012), St. Vincent (2014), and the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), for which he later won his second Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie.
Family
Trivia
Accidentally broke Robert De Niro's nose during the filming of Mad Dog and Glory (1993).
Ranked #82 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
1997 Recipient of the Sons of the Desert Annual Comedy Performer Award on April 19th, 1997.
Appeared in Scrooged (1988) with three of his brothers.
Father, with Mickey Kelley, of sons Homer Murray of Clan Murray (b. 1982) and Luke Murray of Clan Murray (b. 1985).
Father, with Jennifer Butler, of four sons: Caleb James Murray of Clan Murray (b. January 11, 1993), Jackson William Murray of Clan Murray (b. October 6, 1995), Cooper Jones Murray of Clan Murray (b. January 27, 1997) and Lincoln Darius Murray of Clan Murray (b. May 30, 2001).
He is a co-owner of the New York Yankees single A affiliate baseball team, the Charleston RiverDogs.
Related through marriage to guitar player, lyricist and singer Chris Luxem.
Set to become part-owner of his third minor league baseball team, the new Brockton Rox, in Mass., with friend Van Schley.
Has become the unofficial patron saint of the forums of the Football Manager website, home to one of the biggest selling PC games of all time.
He is part of The Goldklang Group that includes Van Schley, baseball marketing guru Mike Veeck, and Saturday Night Live (1975) comedian Jimmy Fallon. The group owns minor league baseball teams the St. Paul Saints and the Brockton Rox of the Northern League, the Charleston RiverDogs, the Fort Myers Miracle, the Hudson Valley Renegades, the Evansville Otters and they run the Portland Beavers.
Personal Quotes
I'm a nut, but not just a nut.
If you walk up to some random person on the street, grab them by the shoulder, and say 'Did you just see what I saw?!'....you'll find that no one wants to talk to you.
The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You've got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is.
There aren't many downsides to being rich, other than paying taxes and having relatives asking for money. But being famous, that's a 24 hour job right there.
I'm over the Oscar thing. I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive. I've seen it. The nice thing is that I'm over here in Europe making a movie and so I don't need to worry about it.
I know how to be sour. I know that taste.
[on Lost in Translation (2003)] Many people say, "Do you think this is offensive to the Japanese?" Well, I know the Japanese are laughing more at the Americanisms than we are laughing at the Japanese-isms... they love watching the stupidity of the foreigner in Tokyo. They're not offended at all. They know that the bowing is funny and that their language is impenetrable to the rest of the world.
You know the theory of cell irritability?. If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba, the cell will completely collapse and become nothing. That's kind of what it's like being famous. People say hi, how are you doing, and after the thousandth time, you just get angry; you really pop.
There's definitely a lot of trash that comes with the prize of being famous. It's a nice gift, but there's a lot of wrapping and paper and junk to cut through. Back then, when a movie came out and people saw you on the street, their reaction was so supercharged that it was scary. It would frighten other people. It used to really rattle me. I mean, everybody would love to have their clothes torn off by a mob of girls, but being screamed at is different.
It was cool that an Oscar nomination never happened for a long time, and then it was cool that it did happen. But I don't want to always be feeling this thing in my chest like, 'Am I good enough? Am I gonna be rejected?'
Why would you get up there and bore people? I never have figured that out. These people are supposedly in the entertainment industry, and they finally get up there to that podium and they become the most boring people in the world. [on award acceptance speeches]
