Bill Murray (born September 21, 1950) is an Academy Award-nominated American comedian and actor. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live, following that with roles in films including Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Groundhog Day.

Biography

Murray, the fifth of nine children, was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois (suburban Chicago), the son of Lucille (née Collins), a mail room clerk, and Edward J. Bill II, a lumber salesman. Murray, along with his siblings, grew up in an Irish Catholic family. Three of his siblings are actors: John Murray, Joel Murray, and Brian Doyle-Murray. His sister, Nancy, is an Adrian Dominican Sister in Michigan, traveling around the country portraying St. Catherine of Siena.

The family lived in poverty, and Lucille Bill pressured her children to work. As a youth, Bill read children's biographies of American heroes like Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok and Davy Crockett. He attended St. Joseph's grade school and Loyola Academy. During his teenage years, he worked as a caddy to fund his education in a Roman Catholic High School. The 1960s were tough on Bill and his family. His father had diabetes, one of his sisters had polio and his mother had several miscarriages. During his teen years he was the lead singer of a rock band called the Dutch Masters and took part in high school and community theater.

After graduating, he attended Regis University in Denver, Colorado, taking pre-med courses. However, when police arrested him for possession of marijuana at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, he abandoned his studies.

With an invitation from his older brother, Brian, Bill got his start at Second City Chicago studying under Del Close. The improvisational comedy troupe was a perfect fit for Murray's clever, dry humor and ad libbing. In 1974, he moved to New York City and was recruited by John Belushi as a featured player on The National Lampoon Radio Hour, which aired on some 600 stations from 1973 to 1974.

In 1975, an Off Broadway version of a Lampoon show led to his first television role as a cast member of the ABC variety show Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell that featured animal acts and little kids with loud voices. That same season, another variety show titled NBC's Saturday Night premiered. Cosell's show lasted just one season, canceled in early 1976.

After working in Los Angeles with the "guerrilla video" commune TVTV on a number of projects, Bill rose to prominence in 1976. He joined the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live for the show's second season, following the departure of Chevy Chase.

During the first few seasons of SNL Bill was in a serious, romantic relationship with fellow cast member Gilda Radner.

Bill landed his first starring role with the film Meatballs in 1979. He followed this up with his portrayal of famed writer Hunter S. Thompson in 1980's Where the Buffalo Roam. In the early 1980s, he starred in a string of box-office hits including Caddyshack, Stripes, and Tootsie.

Bill began work on a film adaptation of the novel The Razor's Edge. The film, which Bill also co-wrote, was his first starring role in a dramatic film. He later agreed to star in Ghostbusters, in a role originally written for John Belushi. This was a deal Bill made with Columbia Pictures in order to gain financing for his film. Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing film of 1984. But The Razor's Edge, which was filmed before Ghostbusters but not released until after, was a box-office flop.

Upset over the failure of Razor's Edge, Bill took four years off from acting to study philosophy and history at the Sorbonne, frequent the Cinematheque in Paris, and spend time with his family in their Hudson River Valley home. During that time, his second son, Luke, was born. With the exception of a cameo appearance in the 1986 movie Little Shop of Horrors, he did not make any appearances in films, though he did participate in several public readings in Manhattan organized by playwright/director Timothy Mayer and in a production of Bertolt Brecht's A Man's Man.

Bill returned to films in 1988 with Scrooged and the sequel Ghostbusters II in 1989. In 1990, Bill made his first and only attempt at directing when he co-directed Quick Change with producer Howard Franklin. His subsequent films What About Bob? (1991) and Groundhog Day (1993) were box-office hits and critically acclaimed. The latter film is still considered one of his greatest film performances.

After a string of films that did not do well with audiences, he received much critical acclaim for Wes Anderson's Rushmore for which he won several awards. Bill then experienced a resurgence in his career as a dramatic actor. After dramatic roles in Wild Things, Cradle Will Rock, Hamlet (as Polonius), and The Royal Tenenbaums, he garnered considerable acclaim for the 2003 film Lost in Translation. He received a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA award, as well as an Academy Award nomination. In an interview included on the Lost in Translation DVD, Bill states that this is his favorite movie in which he has appeared.

During this time, Bill still appeared in comedic roles such as Charlie's Angels and Osmosis Jones. In 2004, he provided the voice of Garfield in Garfield: The Movie, and again in 2006 for Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (it should be noted that this makes it a two-way link between Bill and Lorenzo Music, the former voice of Garfield; Music was also the voice of Peter Venkman, Murray's Ghostbusters character, in the cartoon series The Real Ghostbusters). 2004 also marked his third collaboration with Wes Anderson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. His dramatic role in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers was also well received.

In 2005, Bill announced that he would take a break from acting, as he had not had the time since his new breakthrough in the late 1990s. He did return to the big screen, however, for brief cameos in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited and in Get Smart as Agent 13, the agent in the tree. In 2008, he played an important role in the post-apocalyptic film City of Ember.

Bill will also lend his voice for the upcoming game Ghostbusters: The Video Game, due out summer 2009. He will also star in the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Bill became the first guest on NBC's new late night talk show, Late Night with David Letterman on February 1, 1982. He would later appear on the very first episode of The Late Show with David Letterman in August 1993, when the show moved to CBS.

Bill is an avid golfer who often plays in celebrity tournaments. His 1999 book Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf, part autobiography and part essay, expounds on his love of golf. In 2002, he and his brothers starred in the Comedy Central series, The Sweet Spot, which chronicled their adventures playing golf. Bill played Carl Spackler in Caddyshack.

While at a golf tournament with British golfer Ian Poulter in St Andrews, Scotland, Bill was invited by a student of the university to a house party. Bill went with him and the student reported in Scottish papers that he acted just like he had in the karaoke scene of Lost in Translation, being incredibly fun and energetic. Upon realizing that there were no clean glasses in the house for him to have a drink from, Bill volunteered to do the dishes and was said to be very amiable and unpretentious. In Space Jam, Bill Murray plays himself and plays upon his love for golf. In 2009 Bill was playing with Hal Sutton, Jeff Sluman and Fred Paglia, when an errant tee shot of his struck a bystander in the head. Bill didn't finish out the round, shaken by the incident. "I wasn't sure I was in bounds or not," Bill said in an AP report, "and I saw this NBC golf cart coming at me and he said, ‘I hate to be the one to tell you this but you hit a lady. She's down on the ground.' That is, you know, sobering."

The woman, Gail DiMaggio, was taken to a hospital, but she was alert enough to welcome Bill to her house. In one of those careful-what-you-wish-for twists, DiMaggio's husband, apparently just seconds before impact, had said he hoped Bill hit the ball in their direction.

He is a partner with his brothers in Bill Bros. Caddy Shack, a restaurant chain with locations near Jacksonville and in Myrtle Beach and St. Augustine.

He is a part-owner of the St. Paul Saints independent minor-league baseball team and occasionally travels to Saint Paul, Minnesota to watch the team's games. He also owns part of the Charleston RiverDogs, Hudson Valley Renegades, and the Brockton Rox. He invested in a number of other minor league teams in the past, including the Utica Blue Sox, Fort Myers Miracle, and Salt Lake Trappers. He was also a part-owner of the Auburn Astros (now the Auburn Doubledays) in Auburn, NY.

Being very detached from the Hollywood scene, Bill does not have an agent or manager and reportedly only fields offers for scripts and roles using a personal telephone number with a voice mailbox that he checks infrequently. This practice has the downside of sometimes preventing him from taking parts that he had auditioned for and was interested in, such as that of Sulley in Monsters, Inc, Bernard Berkman in The Squid and the Whale, Frank Ginsburg in Little Miss Sunshine and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He also regretted losing the chance to play Eddie Valient in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he heard that he was considered for the role and that he would have definitely accepted.

During the filming of Stripes, Bill married Margaret Kelley on Super Bowl Sunday in Las Vegas on January 25, 1981. Later, they re-married in Chicago for their families. Margaret gave birth to two sons, Homer (born 1982) and Luke (born 1985). But, following Murray's affair with Jennifer Butler, they divorced in 1996. In 1997, he married Jennifer Butler. Together, they have four sons: Caleb (born January 11, 1993), Jackson (born October 6, 1995), Cooper (born January 27, 1997), and Lincoln (born May 30, 2001). Butler filed for divorce on May 12, 2008 and their divorce was finalized on June 13, 2008.

Bill has homes in Los Angeles, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Charleston, South Carolina, and Rockland County, New York, just outside of New York City.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bill supported Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

Bill is a huge fan of Chicago pro sports teams, especially the Chicago Cubs. (He was once a guest color commentator for a Cubs game during the 80s) and the Chicago Bears.) He also is a Michael Jordan fan and has made cameo appearances in Space Jam and Jordan documentaries. Bill is an avid Quinnipiac University basketball fan, where his son served as head of basketball operations. Bill is a regular fixture at home games. He cheered courtside for the Illinois Fighting Illini's game versus the University of North Carolina in the NCAA Basketball Tournament's championship game in 2005. He is a fixture at home games of those teams when in his native Chicago. After traveling to Florida during the Cubs playoff run to help "inspire" the team (Bill told Cubs slugger Aramis Ramirez he was very ill and needed two home runs to give him the hope to live), he was invited to the champagne party in the Cubs' clubhouse when the team clinched the NL Central in late September 2007, along with fellow actors John Cusack, Bernie Mac, James Belushi, and former Cubs legend Ron Santo. Bill appeared in Santo's documentary, This Old Cub.

On the FunnyOrDie website, he was quoted as follows: "Celebrity Sleeping Tips: If you're having trouble sleeping, just drink a glass of warm milk before you go to bed, like Bill Murray."

As a Chicago native, Bill appeared at the 50th annual Chicago Air & Water Show in August 2008. He performed a tandem jump with the U.S. Army Parachute Team Golden Knights. He was the emcee for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival on July 28, 2007, where he dressed in various guises of Clapton as he appeared through the years.

This Bill Murray Biography Page is Copyright © 2004 - 2009 Chuck Ayoub