Early life and education
Murray was born in Evanston, Illinois, the fifth of nine children in an Irish Catholic family, and was raised in nearby Wilmette. His father, Edward Joseph Murray II, sold lumber and died in 1967 when Bill was a teenager; his mother, Lucille, worked as a mailroom clerk. Several of his siblings also entered show business, most notably actors Brian Doyle-Murray and Joel Murray; his sister Nancy became an Adrian Dominican nun.1 He attended the Jesuit-run Loyola Academy in Wilmette and then enrolled at Regis University in Denver to study pre-med before dropping out.2
Murray found his footing in comedy at Chicago's Second City improv troupe, where he trained under the influential teacher Del Close. That work led to the National Lampoon Radio Hour in the mid-1970s, where he performed alongside John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and his brother Brian, and to the off-Broadway revue The National Lampoon Show (1975), which also featured Harold Ramis.1
Career
After a season on the short-lived Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, Murray was recruited by Lorne Michaels to NBC's Saturday Night Live, joining the cast in 1977 to fill the slot vacated by Chevy Chase. Over three seasons he became a breakout player and shared in the show's Primetime Emmy-winning writing.1 Television launched a film career that quickly made him one of the biggest comedy stars of his generation.
His third collaboration with director Ivan Reitman, after Meatballs (1979) and Stripes (1981), was Ghostbusters (1984), one of the highest-grossing films of the decade.2 Other signature comedies of the era include Caddyshack (1980), Tootsie (1982), Scrooged (1988), What About Bob? (1991), and Groundhog Day (1993). Murray also stepped behind the camera, taking a co-director credit on Quick Change (1990), and wrote and starred in a dramatic adaptation of The Razor's Edge (1984).
From the late 1990s onward Murray reinvented himself as a fixture of acclaimed independent and auteur cinema, becoming a recurring presence in the films of Wes Anderson. He starred in Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), among others. His lead performance in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) won him a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and an Independent Spirit Award, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor; he was widely seen as the frontrunner before Sean Penn won that year for Mystic River.1 Further notable work includes Broken Flowers (2005), the voice of the title character in the live-action Garfield films (2004 and 2006), Zombieland (2009) and Zombieland: Double Tap (2019), and St. Vincent (2014), which brought another Golden Globe nomination. He continued into recent years with Asteroid City (2023) and the 2024 release of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. In 2016 the Kennedy Center honored him with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.3
Known above all for his improvisational instincts, Murray has carried that ad-libbing approach into every Ghostbusters production he has appeared in, frequently reshaping scenes and dialogue on set.
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters (1984)
In early development lore, the original on-screen trio was at one point imagined as Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Murray. Murray started filming on October 27, 1983, flying by Concorde to New York and driving to 62nd Street and Madison Avenue for an 11 a.m. start.4
During the New York City Hall shoot, the city revoked the crew's permit on the day of filming over concerns about the traffic the production would cause. Murray and Dan Aykroyd disappeared for an hour and approached Mayor Ed Koch directly; Koch resolved the issue, allowing the Ecto-1 escort sequence to 550 Central Park West to proceed. One night during the Central Park West shoot, Murray and Aykroyd borrowed police motorcycles, rode around Central Park with lights and sirens running, and pulled over pedestrians. Murray also came up with the idea on set that Mayor Lenny and the Archbishop knew each other on a first-name basis, and coined the name "Lenny" for the mayor in that moment.
On January 20, 1984, scenes were filmed at the firehouse exterior in Los Angeles.4 Murray arrived hours late; half the scene had already been shot with a stand-in. Rather than picking up where filming had stopped, Murray began entertaining the crew and ad-libbing, until Annie Potts directly told him to get on his mark and say his line. The crew reportedly applauded her, and filming resumed.
Murray orchestrated several on-set pranks. He ripped the buttons off Reginald VelJohnson's police uniform as a joke (they were sewn back on). He arranged for puppeteer Harrison Ray to hide inside the Terror Dog puppet and roar when Robin Williams leaned in to examine it during a set visit with Chevy Chase; Williams stumbled backward and nearly fell, but Murray and others caught him, and Williams laughed it off. Murray also spooked Terri Hardin while she was in the Terror Dog suit during her lunch break, and during a visit to Boss Films he snuck up behind matte artist Michelle Moen as she painted, pretending to slip into her canvas while holding a large coffee. On the musical side, Murray objected to the theme-song attempts by Hughes and Thrall and expressed a preference for the band NRBQ.
Ghostbusters II (1989)
During a videotaped rehearsal for the sequel, Murray delivered a long tirade about what he described as an unspecified indignity Ivan Reitman had forced on him during Stripes. While filming the courtroom scene, a physical altercation broke out between Murray and propmaster Bill MacSeems over the weight of the Proton Pack prop, escalating to slapping, kicking, and punching before first assistant director Peter Giuliano stepped between them; the dispute resulted in a firing and a lawsuit. Murray's line "Let's suck in the guts, guys" was ad-libbed while production was outfitting him for a scene and was later folded into the script. His photography session with the Vigo painting was Murray's riff on the famous fashion photographer Richard Avedon, and he recalled the Statue of Liberty crown gimbal as "quite a ride: nausea, sea legs, the whole thing."
Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009)
Murray voiced Peter Venkman in the 2009 video game, his first return to the role in audio form after declining to participate in proposed live-action sequel projects.
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
Murray made a cameo as Dr. Martin Heiss, a debunker of the paranormal, arriving in Boston to film during the week of August 8, 2015. Where director Paul Feig had envisioned Heiss simply as someone who wears suits, Murray shaped the character's look around the English writer and storyteller Quentin Crisp. He filmed with news anchor Pat Kiernan, who returned to Boston a month after the initial shoot to record about 40 minutes of scripted and improvised material; during that session Murray recognized one of the on-set technicians as someone he had worked with on Saturday Night Live. Murray is also thanked in the acknowledgments of the film's tie-in book, Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal.5
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Both Ivan Reitman and director Jason Reitman had working relationships with Murray and were able to reach him directly. Murray read the script, enjoyed it, and agreed to join the cast. On his first day on set he was in his trailer trying to get the television working so he could watch a Chicago Cubs game. He had a tendency to remove props between takes: after one scene he left his Proton Pack on the floor, where a crew member accidentally kicked it, and prop armourer Ben Eadie had to glue pieces back together.
Murray improvised the line "Count of three, go on two, one two blast" immediately before the cast fired on Gozer, and he contributed multiple variations on Peter's barrage of insults at the god, only some of which made the theatrical cut. He needled Ernie Hudson over a pad hidden beneath Hudson's spot on the dirt ground during the insult scene; Finn Wolfhard suggested Trevor should laugh to annoy Gozer, though Jason Reitman kept the performance low-key, and Olivia Wilde broke character laughing during Murray's takes. After one cut, Hudson accidentally struck Murray's head with his Particle Thrower prop, leaving a mark; Murray returned within a few minutes. The mid-credits scene between Peter and Dana took half a day to film, much of it Murray improvising different takes of a script he considered unnecessary. On the last day of shooting, Murray handed Ben Eadie a crumpled envelope; Eadie assumed it was his usual script copy and tried to return it, but Murray told him it was a gift, a certificate for a free massage.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Director Gil Kenan asked Murray which spirit Peter Venkman would have hidden in the garage bay back in 1989; Murray answered "Apple Brandy." During filming of the Garraka-trapping sequence, Murray led the original cast in a rendition of "She's a Brick House."
The Real Ghostbusters
Murray was aware that the animated version of Peter Venkman sounded nothing like him, and around the midpoint of the series' production he raised the question with Ivan Reitman over lunch. The episode "Take Two" directly addresses the discrepancy: Winston Zeddemore reads Murray's name from the original film cast, and at the episode's end Peter remarks that Murray "doesn't look a thing like him." When footage from the first film is briefly shown in a theater at that moment, Maurice LaMarche voiced the live-action version of Peter.
IDW comics references
Murray appears by name or allusion in several IDW Ghostbusters publications. Dan Aykroyd's introduction to the Ghostbusters: Mass Hysteria hardcover references Murray, as does the introduction to the Ghostbusters 101: Everyone Answers the Call collection. In Ghostbusters 101 #4, Ray Stantz mentions visiting a dimension based on Caddyshack and alludes to Carl Spackler, Murray's character in that film, blowing up the golf course, before joking about Murray's golf skills. Peter's birthday on the employee file in Ghostbusters: Year One #3 matches Murray's actual birth date of September 21, 1950,6 and in Ghostbusters: Year One #2 Peter's hairstyle is based on Tripper, Murray's character from Meatballs (1979).7 The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters crossover Volume 2 includes a Ghostbusturtle named Bill Murray, and a white golf bag visible across issues 3 through 5 references a bag Murray carried for Scott Simpson during the second round of the 1997 Motorola Western Open at Cog Hill Country Club in Lemont, Illinois.
Personality
Murray is well known for his improvisational instincts and his disinterest in the machinery of celebrity. He works without the usual Hollywood entourage, keeping no publicist, personal lawyer, or personal makeup artist, and is famous for being difficult to reach, which is part of why his Ghostbusters returns have so often come through filmmakers who already knew him personally. That same spontaneity drives both his on-set pranks and the unscripted lines that have made their way into the finished films.
"You are always away from home, as a film actor. Look at me now. You can be stuck in a hotel, several thousand miles away in a whole different time zone, and it is never glamorous. You can't sleep, you put on the television in the middle of the night when you can't understand a word, and you make phone calls back home which don't really give you the comfort they should. I know what it's like to be that stranger's voice calling in. It happens in acting and it happens in business."
Personal life
Murray was married to Margaret Kelly from 1981 to 1996, and the couple had two sons. He married Jennifer Butler in 1997; they had four sons before divorcing in 2008.1 A lifelong baseball enthusiast and devoted Chicago Cubs fan, Murray has held ownership stakes in several minor league teams, including the St. Paul Saints and the Charleston RiverDogs, and in 2024 he joined Mike Veeck in purchasing the Joliet Slammers of the Frontier League.8 He has long kept a home in Charleston, South Carolina, among other residences.
Murray appeared in full Ghostbusters gear to accept the Best Cameo award for Zombieland at the 2010 Spike Scream Awards (filmed October 16, aired October 19, 2010), and accepted the Best Horror Movie award for the film at the same show.9 During his acceptance speech he quipped, "I'm sorry, I don't mean anything by this. It was just all that was left that was clean." A smudge of permanent marker from signing autographs just before his appearance was visible on his cheek. According to GBFans.com reporting at the time, the flight suit was produced by Sony for the Ghostbusters: The Video Game promotion in 2008, and the Proton Pack Murray wore on stage was built by GBFans.com community member Sean Bishop. Also at the awards show was a Sigourney Weaver tribute by James Cameron that included Ghostbusters clips; Murray and Weaver were photographed together backstage.
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
