Bill Murray's Biography
Often seen on pro-am golf tournaments, Bill Murray used to caddy at Indian Hill Golf Club to help pay for his Catholic school tuition.
He briefly studied at Regis College in Denver, but returned to Chicago and became a founding member of the Second City comedy group.
Bill Murray went on to replace Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live.
Bill Murray is probably the person from Saturday Night Live who has gone on to have the most interesting and diverse roles in films.
Murray's early film roles included the comedies Meatballs (1979) and Caddyshack (1980), and these were followed with movies like Tootsie (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989) and Groundhog Day (1993).
In an article on Bill Murray in Time Magazine (February 28, 2005), there is a quote from Harold Ramis who directed Caddyshack and Groundhog Day:
"...few scripts are perfect and every movie Bill's been in, he's put on his shoulders and made infinitely better ... That's an incredible burden on his creativity and leadership, but he's so suspicious and his standards are so high that he allows very few people to help carry the weight."
David Thomson has an interesting observation about Bill Murray's career in his New Biographical Dictionary of Film:
"An intriguing pattern began to emerge - give him [Bill Murray] a big, obvious comedy, with himself in the lead, and it was likely to flop: Larger Than Life (96, Harold Franklin); The Man Who Knows Too Little (97, Jon Amiel) - but put him in a modest role, here or there, and invariably you wondered why no one really gives Bill Murray his head: Ed Wood (94, Tim Burton); Kingpin (96, Bobby and Peter Farrelly); Wild Things (98, McNaughton); Rushmore (98, Wes Anderson)."
His more recent films have also been a mixed bag including, on the one hand, Charlie's Angels, where he reportedly fell out with Lucy Liu; and the excellent Lost in Translation on the other hand, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.
Bill Murray's performance in The Life of Aquatic with Steve Zissou has also been critically acclaimed. It is his third performance in a Wes Anderson film.
Bill Murray said of filming Steve Zissou that it was like a "penitentiary sentence" because he was away from his family for so long.
Murray quickly followed up with Broken Flowers, whose director, Jim Jarmusch said he wrote the part of Don Johnston with Murray in mind.
Because of the hectic schedule he had been enduring, Bill Murray said in May 2005 that he might take a break from acting.
In February 2007, Bill Murray went on the Late Show With David Letterman it marked Letterman's 25th year of late night broadcasting. Murray was the first guest on Letterman's then NBC show back in February 1982. Bill Murray was also Letterman's inaugural guest when he moved to CBS in August 1993.
In 2014, Bill Murray starred in The Monuments Men, which also featured Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon and George Clooney, who also directed the film.
Murray has recently appeared in the TV series Alpha House, and Olive Kitteridge.
In 2016, Bill Murray was awarded the 19th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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