William James Murray
Born September 21st, 1950 in Wilmette, Illinois
The fifth of nine children. Older brother Brian and younger brothers Joel and John also have acting careers (the only movie to date to showcase all four brothers is Scrooged).
Married twice, he has six children (two with his first wife, four from his current marriage). All are boys: Homer, Luke, Jackson, Cal, Cooper and Lincoln.
Major Awards:
Oscar nomination, Best Actor for Lost in Translation
Golden Globe nominations for Ghostbusters and Rushmore, and a win for Lost in Translation
Independent Spirit Awards, two wins for Rushmore and Lost in Translation
Started his career on the stage of the legendary Chicago improv club The Second City. From there he joined The National Lampoon in their stage and radio projects working with people like Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis and Christopher Guest. He almost made the cut as one of the original Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time-Players on
"Saturday Night Live" but instead joined in the second season after original castmember Chevy Chase decided to leave the show.
Bill made his first screen appearance with a small uncredited role in
Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976 - Paul Mazursky). His first starring role was in
Meatballs (1979 - Ivan Reitman), a very small Canadian project that became a surprise smash in the summer of 1979 making more than twenty times the paltry million or so it took to make, signaling that Bill Murray was going to be a movie star.
Bill's deadpan delivery, sarcastic wit and desheveled everyman looks made him a comedy icon in movies like
Caddyshack (1981 - Harold Ramis) and
Stripes (1981 - Ivan Reitman), but it was the mega-success of
Ghostbusters (1984 - Ivan Reitman) that created a susperstar.
Murray gave a glimpse into the man underneath the persona when he made Columbia Pictures agree to finance an adaptation of William Somerset Maugham's
The Razor's Edge (1984 - John Byrum) if they wanted him to star in
Ghostbusters. The novel obviously had some personal meaning for Murray, and he co-wrote the screenplay.
The comic persona he honed and perfected from
"SNL" through
Ghostbusters 2 was something he probably could have played for the rest of his career, but Murray made a shift in the kind of material and roles he accepted in the '90s. He co-directed the bank heist comedy
Quick Change (1990) and scored again at the box office with the charming fantasy
Groundhog Day (1993 - Harold Ramis). But again he was always looking for something else, and in the dark comedy
Mad Dog & Glory (1993 - John McNaughton) and a highlighted supporting role in Tim Burton's
Ed Wood (1994) he showed he had much more range than Carl the dimwitted groundskeeper and Venkman the Ghostbuster.
Murray's career hit a new level when Wes Anderson cast him in
Rushmore (1998). The brooding character in this dark comedy was perfect for Murray's gifts as a screen actor, where his deadpan wit and supreme subtltly could be used to explore dramatic depths that his earliest work rarely hinted at (save for his great supporting role in
Tootsie). Subsequent projects
Cradle Will Rock (1999 - Tim Robbins),
Hamlet (2000 - Michael Almereyda),
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001 - Wes Anderson),
Lost in Translation (2003 - Sofia Coppola),
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004 - Wes Anderson) and
Broken Flowers (2005 - Jim Jarmusch) further explored what Murray was really capable of as an actor. Approaching sixty years old, Bill is at the top of his game and doing the best work of his life.
Bill has two cherished pet projects that he's been trying to get made for years with no success. One is a biography of Bill Veeck, the Chicago native and colorful owner of minor and Major League Baseball franchises (including the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox) who was famous for his wacky publicity stunts and love of the game. Murray owns the rights to his autobiography,
Veeck as in Wreck, but has been unable to find backing. Murray is a huge baseball fan, especially The Cubs, and is himself part-owner of the St. Paul Saints of the Independent League. Mike Veeck, Bill Veeck's son, is the principal owner.
The other project is another biography, of Michael Larson who scammed the gameshow
"Press Your Luck" in the 1980s. He memorized the supposedly "random" pattern of the computerized game board and won over $100,000.00 in cash and prizes. He got to keep the money, but lost it all later through bad decisions and a nasty divorce. He died in 1999 of throat cancer while laying low to avoid the S.E.C.
My picks for his best movies...
1.
Rushmore
2.
Lost in Translation
3.
Broken Flowers
4.
Groundhog Day
5.
Quick Change
My picks for his worst movies...
1.
Osmosis Jones
2.
Garfield
3.
Kingpin
4.
Charlie's Angels
5.
Ghostbusters 2
Most underrated...
1.
Quick Change
2.
The Man Who Knew Too Little
3.
Hamlet (2000)*
*Murray plays Polonius in this modernized take on Shakespeare, and I think his reading of the "Never a borrower nor a lender be" speech is the best I've ever seen of that piece, stage or screen, bar none.
Most overrated...
Kingpin
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