Who doesn’t love Bill Murray? Well, a recent poll of the world finds that nobody doesn’t love him. There was a 100% positive response. It was unbelievable, yet completely believable.
The legendary comedic actor turns 60 years old on September 21st. To celebrate, here are 60 facts, some well-known, others not-so-well-known, about him.
1. Bill was born on September 21st, 1950 in Wilmette, Illinois.
2. He is the fifth of nine children.
3. His father, Edward, was a lumber salesman.
4. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote the first draft of Ghostbusters after witnessing Bill kill two actual ghosts with a rolled-up newspaper.
5. His sister, Nancy, is a genuine Sister (a nun). She plays St. Catherine of Siena in a one-woman show. Ain’t that nuts?
6. Bill was first offered Cary Grant’s eventual role in His Girl Friday, ten full years before Murray’s birth.
7. Murray owns a restaurant called the Caddy Shack with his brothers. He enjoys the crab cakes.
8. He does his own podcast, “Take a Chill Pill with Bill”. He has never released a single episode to the public.
9. Murray has never delivered a scripted line in any movie… ever. It’s all off the top of his head.
10. Dancing with the Stars has pursued Bill for years, but he refuses to dance with a partner.
11. He is co-owner of minor league baseball teams in St. Paul, Fort Myers, Husdon Valley, Brockton and Sioux Falls. He occasionally plays left field in disguise.
12. Stripes was a documentary. Murray and Harold Ramis changed their names during filming for reasons of national security.
13. Bill’s fridge is stocked with distilled water and baking soda. Nobody knows why.
14. One of his brothers, John (star of 1985’s Moving Violations), lives solely off the annual check that Bill sends his siblings for Christmas.
15. He attended Regis College in Denver before dropping out as a sophomore. He didn’t like the food.
16. Murray convinced Columbia Pictures to make The Razor’s Edge by agreeing to be in Ghostbusters. For Ghostbusters 3, it is believed that he will try to make a similar deal to get a Rip Taylor biopic made.
17. J.D. Salinger famously never sold the movie rights to The Catcher in the Rye, thinking only he himself could pull off the character of Holden Caulfield. He was wrong. Bill Murray could have pulled it off at any point in his career, even now. J.D. was a big phony in this regard.
18. The groundhog used in Groundhog Day bit Bill twice during filming. Not to be outdone, Murray bit the groundhog three times.
19. Bill Murray is hilarious.
20. His favorite baseball team is the Chicago Cubs. His least favorite team was the Montreal Expos. That’s the real reason why they moved and changed their name.
21. Bill played Hunter S. Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam. It was the only thing that the curmudgeonly Thompson ever liked, besides booze, drugs and guns.
22. If you play the audio from Bill’s scenes in Kingpin backwards you find detailed instructions on how to bowl a perfect game.
23. The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, 2012. Bill knows exactly why this is and will reveal it on December 20th, 2012.
24. A recent study showed that 97% of men try to emulate Bill Murray while flirting. The other 3% are dead.
25. Bill hates the number 26.
27. He doesn’t own a computer, but has a complete understanding of them.
28. When playing in pro-am golf events, Bill often hits bad shots on purpose. Playing good golf just isn’t funny.
29. He replaced Chevy Chase on the original cast of “Saturday Night Live”. Chevy Chase is a douche, but that’s really a fact for another list.
30. Murray places weekly, encouraging phone calls to all the players on his fantasy football team.
31. To get a rough estimate of the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, one can count the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and then add 37. Bill discovered this.
32. Murray bloodied his head during a recent stunt on “The Late Show”. Up until this point, the scientific community was unsure if Bill could actually bleed.
33. Contrary to news reports at the time, Murray did not skydive with the US Army Parachute Team Golden Knights in 2008. They jumped with him.
34. Bill was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Lost in Translation in 2003. Sean Penn won instead. To make amends, Penn punched out Murray’s least-favorite paparazzo.
35. His favorite color is green.
36. He appeared in Space Jam with his friend Michael Jordan, but he refused to speak to Bugs Bunny off camera.
37. The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup. Unless you’re Bill Murray. Then the best part of waking up is remembering how rich, talented and enchanting you are.
38. Bill voiced Garfield the cat in two films, confirming the long-held belief that not even Bill Murray could make Garfield cool.
39. A priest, a rabbi, an imam and Bill Murray walk into a bar. Bill proceeds to charm the hell out of the group and everyone goes home without incident.
40. Murray doesn’t have any pet peeves.
41. Netflix started out as a small operation called BillFlix that mailed out copies of Murray’s films.
42. Bill was stopped in Sweden for operating a golf cart while under the influence of alcohol. He delivered some Caddyshack lines and the cops let him go.
43. It’s a very closely guarded secret that the Associated Press College Football Poll is actually just Bill’s personal rankings.
44. Murray started the current bedbug crisis in New York City as a goof. He feels terrible about it.
45. It’s widely known that Murray doesn’t have an agent or publicist, but he does have a butler just for his shoe closet.
46. He has six children, all boys. Bill considers that a complete success.
47. One of his sons, Luke Murray, is a basketball coach at Wagner College. Isn’t that nice?
48. Bill broke Robert De Niro’s nose while filming Mad Dog and Glory. When asked why he did it, Murray replied, “Why not?”
49. Bill isn’t buying the hype around Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez. You shouldn’t either.
50. He married his first wife in Las Vegas on Super Bowl Sunday. Coolest. Wedding. Ever.
51. Murray was arrested at age 20 for attempting to smuggle 9 pounds of marijuana through an airport. There’s no joke here. That’s just a lot of weed.
52. It’s difficult to come up with 60 facts about anyone, let alone the reclusive Bill Murray.
53. He briefly studied philosophy in France. By philosophy I mean women, by France I mean everywhere, and by briefly I mean indefinitely.
54. Bill wrote a book, “Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf”. It has replaced The Bible in several forward-thinking churches.
55. He once called a Cubs game for WGN-TV. It was the first time in baseball history that an announcer, not a pitcher, was awarded the win.
56. Has been repeatedly asked to join Mensa, but refuses because he doesn’t want to get roped into working the pancake breakfast fundraiser.
57. Bill once FedEx-ed an entire truckload of Coca-Cola to the world headquarters of Pepsi just to mess with them.
58. Murray recently bartended for members of the Wu Tang Clan during the South by Southwest festival in Austin. So he’s got that going for him.
59. He has the world’s largest collection of vintage umbrellas. Has been quoted as saying he is “saving them for a rainy day.”
60. A shared admiration for Murray and his role in Meatballs almost got The Beatles back together in late 1979.
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