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Ernie Hudson (born Earnest Lee Hudson, December 17, 1945, Benton Harbor, Michigan) is the actor best known for portraying Winston Zeddemore across the Ghostbusters film series. A U.S. Marine veteran and Yale School of Drama alumnus, Hudson has worked across film, television, and voice acting for more than five decades.
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After a brief stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, Hudson enrolled at Wayne State University to develop his writing and acting skills. He was later awarded a full scholarship to the Master of Fine Arts program at the Yale School of Drama. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Hudson built a career across film and television, with notable credits including The Crow, Congo, Airheads, and Miss Congeniality. On television, he is recognized for portraying Warden Leo Glenn in the HBO series Oz, and more recently voiced Agent Fowler in Transformers Prime and played Dr. Fields in The Secret Life of the American Teenager. He has also appeared in Modern Family, Franklin and Bash, and Mob City.
Like the character he plays, Hudson is a genuine U.S. Marine veteran. His enlistment was short: a drill instructor ordered him to eat shellfish not long after he signed up, he suffered an asthma attack due to a shellfish allergy, and he was discharged shortly after.
Hudson's career-defining role is Winston Zeddemore, the fourth Ghostbuster, appearing in Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II (1989), Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024). He reprised the role as a voice actor in Ghostbusters: The Video Game (released June 2009).
In Ghostbusters (2016), Hudson appears in a separate, unrelated role as Mr. Tolan, the uncle of new Ghostbuster Patty Tolan.
Hudson contributed written content to IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters: Total Containment collected edition, including the introduction and an essay titled "Bustin' (Still) Makes Me Feel Good."
Hudson auditioned for the role of Winston Zeddemore in The Real Ghostbusters animated series. However, casting director Marsha Goodman was directed by the producers to cast Arsenio Hall, who was considered funnier and sillier for the part. Hall voiced Winston for the full run of the series.
Hudson first heard about Ghostbusters when he happened to bump into director Ivan Reitman in an elevator at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Reitman told him there was no role for him at that time, but Hudson later auditioned for Winston and was cast.
During production, Hudson was known as the crew's "barbecue master," hosting cookouts at his home every other weekend and opening them to cast and crew.
At the Westwood premiere, Hudson and Annie Potts were not recognized as part of the cast and were removed from the red carpet by security. Hudson also greeted moviegoers outside Westwood's AVCO theater on premiere day while dressed in full Winston costume.
Hudson happened not to have a mustache during filming of Ghostbusters II. There was no deliberate decision to have him shave it; he simply didn't have one at the time. He had also considered shaving his head before filming began.
For the scene where Egon, Ray, and Winston emerge from the River of Slime outside the Manhattan Museum of Art, filming took place in New York at approximately 2 a.m. in around 10-degree weather. The actors were repeatedly doused with buckets of slime over many hours, with no heaters on set. Hudson at one point asked Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis what they had been thinking when they wrote that scene.
On the day Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Hudson filmed together, the first shot of the morning was the sequence where Gozer throws them into the side of Ecto-1.
Murray teased Hudson for having a pad hidden under his spot on the dirt ground during the insult scene; Hudson quipped that it was for the stunt man. Olivia Wilde, still in her Gozer costume and Pazuzu makeup, sat with the typically introverted Hudson for lunch during production. Hudson accidentally struck Murray's head with his Particle Thrower prop after Jason Reitman called cut on a scene; it left a mark, but Murray returned to set a few minutes later.
For the realistic version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, the development team used Hudson's appearance in the film Airheads as reference for his character model.
The IDW Comics series includes several in-universe nods to Hudson. In Ghostbusters Annual 2015, Winston's blue coffee mug displays the text "Reggie Sandman Martin," the name of the boxer Hudson portrayed in the Full House episode "Knock Yourself Out" (Season 1, Episode 7, October 30, 1987).
In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters Volume 2 Issue #3, the Ghostbusturtles reference a co-worker out sick whose first name is Ernie Hudson. On Cover B of Ghostbusters Year One Issue #1, Winston's employee file lists his birthday as June 17, 1945, derived from Hudson's actual birthday of December 17, 1945. In Ghostbusters Year One Issue #4, Winston's outfit is visually based on one worn by Hudson's character Sergeant Tremaine "Night Train" Lane in the 1986 NBC series The Last Precinct.
"I've been in this business for 40 years and some of my close friends have never been seen in anything. So to have the opportunity to be in a movie, especially one as culturally present as Ghostbusters, is really a treat I treasure every day. So when people come up to me and say 'That's a big Twinkie' or 'I've seen sh*t that will turn you WHITE', I don't really mind at all."
