A celebration of Bill

Bill Murray with SNL co-stars Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman. Murray in 1979’s Meatballs. Murray and Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day. Scarlett Johansson and Murray in Lost In Translation. Murray first rose to fame in 1977 on the cast of

playing smarmy crooner “Nick the lounge singer”, before landing his first major big screen role in the 1979 hit By 1980, Murray had quit SNL and over the next two decades became one of Hollywood’s biggest comedic stars through such roles as an oblivious groundskeeper in Caddyshack (1980), a supernatural investigator in Ghostbusters (1984) and a doomed weatherman in Groundhog Day (1993).

In recent years, Murray’s roles have taken a more serious turn, including in a handful of Wes Anderson films such as Rushmore (1998) and his Oscar-nominated performance as a worn-out movie star in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), for which he won a Golden Globe. He has also won two Emmy Awards.

Born in 1950 in a Chicago suburb, Murray was the fifth of nine children. He first got involved in comedy when he followed his older brother Brian Doyle-Murray onto the cast of Chicago’s famed Second City improvisational comedy troupe. “The only reason I’m here is because of my brother Brian,” Murray told the crowd on Sunday.