Bill Murray (born September 21, 1950, Wilmette, Illinois, U.S.) is an American comedian and actor best known for his trademark deadpan humor on television’s Saturday Night Live and for his film roles. Murray starred in the comedy classics Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), and Groundhog Day (1993) before taking on more challenging roles in such films as Rushmore (1998) andLost in Translation (2003). The former movie was directed by Wes Anderson, and the two collaborated on a number of subsequent films.

SNL, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters

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Murray is one of eight children born to Lucille Murray and Edward J. Murray II. The close-knit family lived in Wilmette, Illinois. In addition to Bill Murray, three other siblings would become actors: Brian, Bill, and Joel Murray; Brian adopted the stage name Brian Doyle-Murray. Bill Murray began his acting career on the National Lampoon Radio Hour (1975) alongside fellow comedians John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. From 1977 to 1980 Murray performed on NBC’s Saturday Night Live sketch comedy show, on which he popularized a seedy, shifty comedic persona.

During this time, Murray launched his film career with a string of commercial hits, including Meatballs (1979), which is set at a summer camp; Caddyshack (1980), a golf comedy cowritten by Brian Doyle-Murray; and Stripes (1981), about two friends (Murray and Harold Ramis) who join the army. In 1984 Murray starred with Aykroyd and Ramis in Ghostbusters, which became one of the highest-grossing films of the decade.

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Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation, and Wes Anderson films

A run of unsuccessful films led Murray into a self-imposed hiatus until he directed and starred in Quick Change (1990). After playing a burned-out weatherman in the existential comedy Groundhog Day (1993), Murray began tackling more thoughtful and challenging parts, including supporting roles in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) and Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998).

In addition to earning an Academy Award nomination, Murray won a Golden Globe Award and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for his role as a washed-up American actor visiting Japan in the acclaimed film Lost in Translation (2003), which was written and directed by Sofia Coppola. The depth and sensitivity of his performance surprised critics and solidified his place as an accomplished dramatic actor. Murray also earned critical acclaim for his performance as a longtime bachelor who reexamines his romantic choices in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers (2005).

After Rushmore, Murray appeared in numerous other films by Anderson, including The Royal Tenenbaums (2001); The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), in which he starred as a world-weary oceanographer; The Darjeeling Limited (2007); Moonrise Kingdom (2012); The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); and The French Dispatch (2021). He provided the voice of the sardonic cat Garfield in two commercially successful films (2004 and 2006) based on the eponymous comic strip, as well as the voice of a badger in Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), an animated film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book. Murray lent his voice to another Anderson animated feature, Isle of Dogs (2018), playing one of a band of canines exiled to the aptly named Trash Island.

St. Vincent and Olive Kitteridge

Murray also took supporting roles as a funeral director in the whimsical Depression-era comedy Get Low (2009) and as a mobster in the thriller Passion Play (2010). In 2012 he starred as U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson, which focused on the president’s private life during a weekend in 1939 when he entertained British royalty. Murray later played a member of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) unit, which recovered works of art stolen by the Nazis during World War II, in The Monuments Men (2014). His turn as a bibulous profanity-spewing ne’er-do-well in the ensemble comedy St. Vincent (2014) was singled out by critics as particularly praiseworthy, as was his evocation of a depressed widower opposite star Frances McDormand in the HBO television miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), based on a book by Elizabeth Strout. His performance in the latter production earned Murray an Emmy Award.

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Murray then portrayed a music manager who guides a young Afghan singer to stardom on her country’s version of the musical competition program American Idol in Rock the Kasbah (2015). Murray lent his distinctive voice to a computer-animated version of the bear Baloo in a 2016 live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. He was later cast in Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die (2019), a wry take on the zombie movie genre. In 2020 Murray reteamed with Coppola—this time, on the dramedy On the Rocks, about a young mother who, fearing her husband is having an affair, seeks help from her playboy father.

Later work

Murray had witty cameos in the several reboots (2016, 2021, and 2024) of Ghostbusters. In 2021 he appeared in the TV miniseries The Now, and the following year he had a small role as a Boston bartender the Vietnam War drama The Greatest Beer Run Ever. In 2023 Murray played Lord Krylar in the Marvel superheroes film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The following year he starred in The Friend, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s novel about a woman (Naomi Watts) who takes custody of the Great Dane of her former teacher and best friend (Murray) following his death.

An avid golfer, Murray is the author (with George Peper) of Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf (1999), a humorous book about his love for the sport. In 2016 Murray received the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.