Background and career
Daniel Edward Aykroyd ( AK-royd; born July 1, 1952) is a Canadian and American actor, comedian, screenwriter, musician and producer. Aykroyd was a writer and an original member of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" cast on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1975 until his departure in 1979. During his tenure on SNL, he appeared in a recurring series of sketches, including the Coneheads and the Blues Brothers. For his work on the show, he received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, winning for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 1977. Since his departure, he has returned for guest roles. Aykroyd's most famous roles are as Elwood J. Blues in The Blues Brothers (1980) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), and Dr. Raymond "Ray" Stantz in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989). He reprised his role in various projects within the Ghostbusters franchise. He is also known for his comedic roles in 1941 (1979), Trading Places (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), Dragnet (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988), Nothing but Trouble (1991) and Coneheads (1993). In 1990, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Boolie Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Other dramatic roles include My Girl (1991), Chaplin (1992), North (1994), and Pearl Harbor (2001). Aykroyd has had supporting roles in comedy films such as Tommy Boy (1995), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Loser (2000), Evolution (2001), 50 First Dates (2004), Christmas with the Kranks (2004), I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), and Tammy (2014). He starred as Reverend Mike Weber in the sitcom Soul Man (1997–1998). He has made guest appearances on various television shows, including The Nanny (1994), According to Jim (2002–2009), Living with Fran (2006), The Defenders (2011) and Workin' Moms (2017–2023). Aykroyd is also a businessman, having co-founded the House of Blues chain of music venues and the Crystal Head Vodka brand.
Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952, at Ottawa General Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario. His father, Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd (1922–2020), a civil engineer, worked as a policy adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and his mother, Lorraine Hélène Marie (née Gougeon; 1918–2018), was a secretary. His mother was of French Canadian descent and his father of English, Scottish, Irish, French, and Dutch ancestry. His paternal ancestor was Englishman Samuel Aykroyd from Halifax, Yorkshire, who emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Upper Canada near Kingston, Ontario, in 1810. His brother, Peter (1955–2021), was also an actor. He attended St. Pius X and St. Patrick's High Schools, and studied criminology and sociology at Carleton University but dropped out before completing his degree. He worked as a comedian in various Canadian nightclubs and ran an after-hours speakeasy, Club 505, in Toronto for several years. Aykroyd developed his musical career in Ottawa, particularly through his regular attendance at Le Hibou, a club that featured many blues artists. He describes these influences:
There was a little disco club there called Le Hibou, which in French means "the owl." And it was run by a gentleman named Harvey Glatt, and he brought every, and I mean every, blues star that you or I would ever have wanted to have seen through Ottawa in the late '50s, well I guess more late '60s sort of, in around the Newport jazz rediscovery. I was going to Le Hibou and hearing James Cotton, Otis Spann, Pinetop Perkins, and Muddy Waters. I did actually jam behind Muddy Waters. S. P. Leary left the drum kit one night, and Muddy said "anybody out there play drums? I don't have a drummer." And I walked on stage and we started, I don't know, Little Red Rooster, something. He said "keep that beat going, you make Muddy feel good." And I heard Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett). Many, many times I saw Howlin' Wolf. As well as the Doors. And of course Buddy Guy, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. So I was exposed to all of these players, playing there as part of this scene to service the academic community in Ottawa, a very well-educated community. Had I lived in a different town I don't think that this would have happened, because it was just the confluence of educated government workers, and then also all the colleges in the area, Ottawa University, Carleton, and all the schools—these people were interested in blues culture. Aykroyd's first professional experience, which he gained at the age of 17, was as a member of the cast of the short-lived Canadian sketch comedy series The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour, with Lorne Michaels, among others. He was a member of the Second City comedy troupe in 1973 in both Toronto and Chicago.
Aykroyd gained fame on the American late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). He was originally hired, and paid $278 a week (equivalent to $1,603 in 2024), as a writer, but became part of the cast before the series premiered. The original cast was called "The Not Ready For Prime Time Players". Aykroyd appeared on the show for its first four seasons, from 1975 to 1979. He brought a sensibility that combined youth, unusual interests, talent as an impersonator, and manic intensity. Guest host Eric Idle of Monty Python said that Aykroyd's ability to write and act out characters made him the only member of the SNL cast capable of being a Python. He was known for his impersonations of celebrities such as Jimmy Carter, Vincent Price, Richard Nixon, Rod Serling, Tom Snyder, and Julia Child. He was also known for his recurring roles, such as Beldar, father of the Coneheads family; with Steve Martin, Yortuk Festrunk, one of the "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" brothers from Bratislava, Slovakia; sleazy late-night cable TV host E. Buzz Miller and his cousin, corrupt maker of children's toys and costumes Irwin Mainway (who extolled the virtues and defended the safety of the "Bag-o-Glass" toy); Fred Garvin, a male prostitute; and high-bred but lowbrow critic Leonard Pinth-Garnell. Aykroyd and Jane Curtin parodied the CBS news show 60 Minutes Point/Counterpoint segment, which featured the liberal Shana Alexander and the conservative segregationist James Kilpatrick, by portraying the two as hating each other; Aykroyd's first words in response to Curtin's point were, "Jane, you ignorant slut!" Aykroyd's eccentric talent was recognized by others in the highly competitive SNL environment; when he first presented his "Super Bass-O-Matic '76" sketch, a fake TV commercial in which a garish pitchman based on Ron Popeil touts a food blender that turns an entire bass into liquid pulp, the other writers and cast members considered the sketch "so exhilaratingly strange that many remember sitting and listening, open-mouthed... Nobody felt jealous of it because they couldn't imagine writing anything remotely like it." Aykroyd later said the sketch was inspired by seeing his aunt Helene Gougeon (a culinary writer and food columnist in Montreal) put a bass into a blender to make a bouillabaisse when he was 12 years old. Aykroyd was a close friend and partner of fellow cast member John Belushi and shared some of his sensibilities, but was more reserved and less self-destructive. Aykroyd later recalled that, unlike Belushi and others of his peers, he was uninterested in recreational drug use. In 1977, he received an Emmy Award for writing on SNL; he later received two more nominations for writing and one for acting. In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Aykroyd ranked fifth (behind Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, and Mike Myers). "Of all the original greats, Aykroyd is the least imitated", they wrote, "because nobody else can do what he did." In later decades, Aykroyd made occasional guest appearances and unannounced cameos on SNL, playing the politician Bob Dole and talk show host Tom Snyder. He also brought back characters including Irwin Mainway and Leonard Pinth-Garnell. In 1995, he introduced a performance by Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. A fan of the band, he had personally lobbied Lorne Michaels to book them as musical guests. During some guest appearances, he resurrected the Blues Brothers musical act with frequent host John Goodman in place of Belushi, who was by then deceased. He became the second member of the original cast to host SNL in May 2003, when he appeared in the season finale. During his monologue, he performed a musical number with James Belushi similar to the Blues Brothers, but neither man donned the black suit and sunglasses. On March 24, 2007, Aykroyd appeared as a crying fan of American Idol finalist Sanjaya Malakar (played by Andy Samberg) during "Weekend Update". On February 14, 2009, he appeared as U.S. House Minority leader John Boehner. Aykroyd also made a surprise guest appearance, along with many other SNL alumni, on the show of March 9, 2013.
Backed by such experienced professional R&B sidemen as lead guitarist Steve Cropper, sax man Lou Marini, trumpeter Alan Rubin, and bass guitarist Donald "Duck" Dunn, The Blues Brothers proved more than an SNL novelty. Taking off with the public as a legitimate musical act, they performed live gigs and in 1978 released the hit album Briefcase Full of Blues (drawn from the fact that Aykroyd, as "Elwood Blues", carried his blues harmonicas in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist in the manner of a CIA courier; Belushi originally carried the key to the handcuffs). Briefcase Full of Blues sold 3.5 million copies and is one of the highest-selling blues albums of all time. The band was much further popularised by the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, which Aykroyd co-wrote. A sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, was released in 1998 with John Goodman as Belushi's replacement. Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles was a regular haunt for the original Blues Brothers in their early days. Belushi and Aykroyd became fixtures at the recording studio, while Blues Brothers band member Steve Cropper called Cherokee his producing home. When they needed a bass player, they were joined by another band member, Donald "Duck" Dunn. During this time, Cropper, along with producing partner and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb, worked on a number of music projects with the two comedians/musicians, including Belushi's favourite band, Fear, and later Aykroyd's movie Dragnet. The Blues Brothers Band continues to tour, both with and without Aykroyd. It features original members Cropper and Marini, along with vocalist Eddie Floyd. Aykroyd sometimes performs as Elwood, along with Belushi's younger brother Jim Belushi, who plays "Brother Zee" on stage. They are most frequently backed by the Sacred Hearts Band.
Concurrent with his work in Saturday Night Live, Aykroyd played Purvis Bickle, lift operator at the fictitious office block 99 Sumach Street in the CBC Television series Coming Up Rosie. After leaving SNL, Aykroyd starred in a number of films, mostly comedies, with uneven results both commercially and artistically. His first three American feature films all co-starred Belushi. The first, 1941 (1979), directed by Steven Spielberg, was a box-office disappointment. The second, The Blues Brothers (1980), which he co-wrote with director John Landis, was a massive hit. The third, Neighbors (1981), had a mixed critical reaction but was another box-office hit. One of his best-received performances was as a blueblood-turned-wretch in the 1983 comedy Trading Places, in which he co-starred with fellow SNL alumnus Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis. He also appeared in Twilight Zone: The Movie in the prologue and at the end of Segment Four as the passenger and the ambulance driver. In the early 1980s, Aykroyd began work on a script for the film that eventually became Ghostbusters, inspired by his fascination with parapsychology and his belief in ghosts. The script initially included a much greater fantasy element, including time travel, but this was toned down substantially through work on the script with Harold Ramis, who became a co-writer, and director Ivan Reitman. Aykroyd originally wrote the role of Dr. Peter Venkman with Belushi in mind, but rewrote it for Bill Murray after Belushi's death. Aykroyd joked that the green ghost, later known as "Slimer", was the ghost of John Belushi and based on Belushi's party-animal personality. Ghostbusters was released in 1984 and became a huge success for Aykroyd, who appeared as one of the lead actors. The film earned nearly US$300 million on a US$30 million budget. Aykroyd also briefly appeared in the hit 1984 action-adventure film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as an escort with a British accent.
