The Full Biography
Bill Murray. Actor. Comedian. The Chicago caddy who learned that a deadpan can carry both a blockbuster and a second, quieter life.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in a jumpsuit, crossing a proton stream with a joke that arrives a half-beat late, as if the emergency were optional. The year was 1984. The picture was Ghostbusters. What the still cannot show is William James Murray of Wilmette, Illinois, one of nine children, a Catholic-school caddy, a Second City graduate who replaced Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live, a four-year vanishing into family and Paris after a flop he had cared about, and a later career that treats surprise itself as a kind of authorship.
He was born on September 21, 1950, in Evanston and raised in Wilmette, on Chicago’s North Shore. His father, Edward, a lumber salesman, died when Bill was seventeen. His mother, Lucille, kept a large Irish-Catholic household together. Older brothers went into comedy first. Brian Doyle-Murray was already in the business. Bill caddied at a local club to help with school, which is why Caddyshack later feels reported rather than invented. He studied at Regis University in Denver, left, knocked around, and found the Second City. The National Lampoon radio hour put him in New York air. Saturday Night Live put him in the country’s living room in 1977, after Chase left and the show needed a different temperature. Murray’s temperature was lower. It turned out to be the one that lasted.
The door to pictures is Meatballs (1979), a summer-camp comedy that made a movie star out of a sketch player. Caddyshack (1980): Carl Spackler, a groundskeeper talking to a gopher and to himself. Stripes (1981). Then the bargain that explains a surprising amount of the file. Columbia wanted him for Ghostbusters. He wanted to make The Razor’s Edge (1984), a sincere adaptation of Maugham he also co-wrote. He did the comic colossus so the studio would fund the pilgrimage. Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing film of 1984 and, for a time, the highest-grossing comedy ever. The Razor’s Edge failed in the only way that hurts a man who has just gotten what he asked for. He went away.
The vanishing is not a myth invented by the internet. From the mid-1980s he stepped back: time with his family, time in France, study that included sitting in on lectures and watching films the way a man watches them when he is not selling a weekend. A cameo in Little Shop of Horrors (1986) is almost the only theatrical exception. He returned with Scrooged (1988) and Ghostbusters II (1989), then, in 1993, Groundhog Day. Phil Connors, a weatherman stapled to one Tuesday in Punxsutawney, is the part that revealed what the deadpan had been hiding: a moral argument. Harold Ramis directed. The picture is now taught as philosophy to people who came for the ice sculpture. It is also the turn.
I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: try being rich first. There’s not so much pressure.Bill Murray
Wes Anderson found him in Rushmore (1998) and did not let go: The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and the Anderson pictures after those in which Murray is weather, not the storm. Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) brought an Oscar nomination for a performance that is mostly listening in a Tokyo hotel. He had become, without a press release announcing the conversion, a dramatic actor who still knew where the laugh was and often refused it.
The Chicago years are the first trade. He caddied at Indian Hill and other North Shore clubs to help with school. He lasted a stretch at Regis University in Denver, left, knocked around, and found the Second City. The National Lampoon radio hour and the Lemmings stage show put him in New York air beside John Belushi and Gilda Radner. Saturday Night Live hired him in 1977, after Chevy Chase left, and needed a different temperature. Murray’s temperature was lower. Nick the Lounge Singer, the lounge lizard who could not read a room, is still a civic object. He won an Emmy as a performer. He left the show in 1980 as a movie star who had already decided pictures were the job.
Ivan Reitman’s Meatballs (1979) is the door: Tripper, a summer-camp counselor, a movie star made out of a sketch player. Harold Ramis’s Caddyshack (1980): Carl Spackler, a groundskeeper talking to a gopher and to himself, golf reported from Wilmette. Reitman’s Stripes (1981), with Harold Ramis again, an Army comedy that still plays on holiday weekends. He did a cameo in Tootsie (1982) for Sydney Pollack, a roommate who steals a scene and leaves. Then the bargain. Columbia wanted him for Reitman’s Ghostbusters. He wanted to make The Razor’s Edge (1984), a sincere adaptation of Maugham he also co-wrote. He did the comic colossus so the studio would fund the pilgrimage. Ghostbusters became the highest-grossing film of 1984 and, for a time, the highest-grossing comedy ever. Peter Venkman, a jumpsuit, a joke that arrives a half-beat late. The Razor’s Edge failed in the only way that hurts a man who has just gotten what he asked for. He went away.
The vanishing is not a myth invented by the internet. From the mid-1980s he stepped back: time with Mickey Kelly and the first two sons, time in France, study that included sitting in on the Sorbonne and watching films the way a man watches them when he is not selling a weekend. A cameo in Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors (1986) is almost the only theatrical exception. He returned with Richard Donner’s Scrooged (1988) and Ghostbusters II (1989), then, in 1993, Ramis’s Groundhog Day. Phil Connors, a weatherman stapled to one Tuesday in Punxsutawney, is the part that revealed what the deadpan had been hiding: a moral argument. The picture is now taught as philosophy to people who came for the ice sculpture. It is also the turn.
Around and after that turn the filmography is thicker than the memes. What About Bob? (1991), with Richard Dreyfuss. Mad Dog and Glory (1993), for John McNaughton. Ed Wood (1994), for Tim Burton, a Bunny Breckinridge who is almost a blessing. Kingpin (1996). The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997). Wild Things (1998). Then Anderson: Herman Blume in Rushmore; Raleigh St. Clair in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001); Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004); Moonrise Kingdom (2012); M. Gustave’s weather in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); Isle of Dogs (2018); The French Dispatch (2021); Asteroid City (2023). Coppola’s Lost in Translation is the Oscar nomination, Bob Harris in the Park Hyatt Tokyo, a performance that is mostly listening. Jim Jarmusch used him in Coffee and Cigarettes and Broken Flowers (2005) and The Dead Don’t Die (2019). Get Low (2009). Hyde Park on Hudson (2012). St. Vincent (2014). Small parts when a picture needed a particular American weather. Larger ones when the script knew what to do with silence.
Six things most people never knew
- He caddied to help pay for school. Carl Spackler is a comic grotesque. The golf is reported from Wilmette, not from a writer’s weekend.
- Ghostbusters was the price of The Razor’s Edge. He did the smash to fund the sincere picture. The smash is immortal. The sincere picture is the one that sent him to France.
- He disappeared for years on purpose. Not a breakdown story. A man with young children and a flop he had believed in, choosing rooms without a call sheet.
- He is famously hard to hire in the ordinary way. An 800 number, a reputation for saying yes in person and not through a stack of agents. Directors tell the story because it is true enough to keep being useful.
- He owns pieces of minor-league baseball. The St. Paul Saints among them. He has taken tickets. He has not treated the sport as a celebrity costume.
- The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor came in 2016. The Kennedy Center, for once, filed the deadpan as American literature.
He married Margaret “Mickey” Kelly in 1981; they had two sons, Homer and Luke, and divorced in 1994. He married Jennifer Butler in 1997; they had four sons and divorced in 2008. The tabloids enjoyed the filings. The work, after each, continued. Brothers remain in the family businesses, including the Murray Bros. Caddyshack restaurants. The public Murray — crashing parties, washing dishes, appearing in a couple’s engagement photograph — is a real habit and also a way of staying out of the ordinary publicity machine. Some of the stories on the internet are true. Some are wishes. He has never been especially interested in authenticating the folklore.
The later years
He is in his seventies. The years after the first fame are still in progress, which is the point of writing them while he is alive. He has kept the golf, the brothers, and a telephone that directors still treat as a pilgrimage. He returned to Venkman in Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters (2016), then in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), a man visiting his own monument and declining to salute. He keeps saying yes to Anderson. He took a lord in a Marvel costume in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023). The Friend (2024) put him, briefly and mortally, at the center of a literary adaptation, a writer who dies and leaves a Great Dane. Golf remains a private sport he plays in public. He still turns up where he is not booked: a party, a dish pit, a couple’s engagement photograph. Some of those stories are true. Some are wishes. He has never been especially interested in authenticating the folklore.
He is not a recluse. He is selective, which Hollywood keeps misreading as mystic. Sons, brothers, ballparks, a telephone that does not always ring back, and a face the culture now uses to mean “the joke is smarter than the room”: that is the present tense. He has owned pieces of minor-league clubs, the St. Paul Saints among them, and has taken tickets. The Murray Bros. Caddyshack restaurants remain a family business. The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor arrived in 2016 at the Kennedy Center, a filing that treated the deadpan as American literature. He has had publicly reported disputes on sets, including a 2022 production halt on a Sony picture after a complaint; those belong in a complete file and do not cancel Groundhog Day. Fond memory is not the same as a cleaned room.
Home is not a single address the magazines can stake out. The first marriage, to Margaret “Mickey” Kelly, ended in 1994; Homer and Luke are the sons from that house. The second, to Jennifer Butler, ended in 2008; four more sons. The tabloids enjoyed the filings. The work, after each, continued. Brothers remain in the comedy and the restaurants. He still golfs. He still says yes in person and not through a stack of agents. The 800 number is folklore that happens to be useful. He has not issued a farewell. He has not asked the country to stop playing the jumpsuit. He has only, repeatedly, chosen rooms without a call sheet when the call sheet was not the point, and then come back when the script knew where the laugh was and when to refuse it. Wilmette is the first kitchen. Punxsutawney is the turn. The next picture is still, on some days, the job. The St. Paul Saints still have his name in the ownership file. The Kennedy Center still has the Twain prize in the ledger. The jumpsuit still plays on holiday weekends. He has not asked any of those rooms to choose. Coppola’s Tokyo hotel still plays as a civic object for people who never saw Meatballs. Anderson still casts him as weather. Venkman still crosses a proton stream with a joke that arrives a half-beat late. The caddy from Wilmette is still, on some nights, all three men at once.
After the spotlight moved
It has not fully moved. That is rare. Peers from the first SNL years are gone or are punchlines or are both. Murray is still cast as if the country’s idea of dry weather might leave if he did. The internet made him a saint of randomness. The filmography is more disciplined than the memes: a smash, a refusal, a vanishing, a moral comedy, a second auteur life, then a long coda in which he appears when he feels like being useful.
He came out of a nine-child house in Wilmette, replaced a brighter-burning star on a late-night show, bought The Razor’s Edge with Ghostbusters, disappeared when the purchase hurt, and came back as the weatherman who had to live the same day until he became decent. If you only remember the jumpsuit, you have the poster. If you remember the caddy job, the four quiet years, Punxsutawney, and the 800 number, you have him.
Portrait: NBC · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons