Rick Moranis

At 71 years old, Rick Moranis has this physical status:

Frederick Allan Moranis (born April 18, 1953), better known as Rick Moranis, is a Canadian actor, comedian, and screenwriter.

He appeared in Second City Television (1983), Strange Brew (1983), Ghostbusters II (1989), and the Flintstones (1994), and The Flintstones (1994). Moranis took a long break from acting to devote his time to his two children as a widower in 1997.

He hasn't appeared in a live action film since, though he has done voice-over work on a few animated films, notably Disney's Brother Bear (2004).

He has also released comedy albums and appeared at fan conventions.

Early life

Moranis was born in Toronto, Ontario, to a Jewish family. Geddy Lee, the frontman of Rush, joined him in elementary school.

Personal life

Moranis married costume designer Ann Belsky in 1986; the two children, a son, and a daughter were born together. Belsky died of cancer in February 1991. Moranis later moved from public life to become a full-time single father.

Moranis was the victim of an assault in New York City's West 70th Street Manhattan neighborhood on October 1, 2020, about 7:30 a.m. ET. He sustained minor injuries to his head, back, and hip. He reported the assault to the New York Police Department (NYPD) who had released security video from the shooting. On November 14, 2020, Marquis Ventura, the suspected perpetrator, was arrested in New York City.

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Career

In the mid-1970s, his career as an entertainer began as a radio disc jockey, using the on-air name "Rick Allan" at three Toronto radio stations.

On CBC-TV, Rick and comedy partner Rob Cowan, who was also a budding young radio announcer, appeared in the mid-1970s. Hockey Night in Canada was extremely popular, and they regularly performed it on the road, including a charity sports dinner in Sarnia, Ontario.

He collaborated with Winnipeg-born writer/director Ken Finkleman on a series of live broadcasts on CBC's 90 Minutes Live; comedy radio specials; and television comedy pilots, including one called Midweek and another called 1980 (produced at CBC Toronto in 1979). Both pilots appeared in a series of irreverent sketches, including an early mockumentary sketch starring Moranis as a Canadian film producer and another depicting Nazi war criminals' dubbed-in voiceovers as they appeared to be discussing their Hollywood recruits and the money one can make in a major documentary series called The World at War.

Moranis was refused by friend and SCTV writer/performer Dave Thomas in 1980 to join the third season cast of Second City Television (SCTV). Moranis was the only cast member not to have performed from a Second City stage company at the time. Woody Allen, Merv Griffin, and David Brinkley are all known for their impressions.

Moranis and Thomas were asked to fill two more minutes with "identifiable Canadian content" and a sketch called The Great White North starring Bob and Doug McKenzie, a couple of Canadian buffoons, with SCTV moving to CBC in 1980 (and syndicated to the United States). By the time NBC ordered 90-minute programs for the United States in 1981 (the fourth season of SCTV in total), the McKenzies' feedback had been so good that the network had ordered that the McKenzies have a sketch in every episode.

Bob and Doug made a pop-culture phenomenon, which culminated in the success of Great White North and Grammy nomination of the 1983 film Strange Brew, Moranis' first major film role.

Gerry Todd, a disc jockey who performed music clips on television, was another notable Moranis character on SCTV. The sketch ran before MTV's debut in the United States, triggering both Sound & Vision and Martin Short to dub Moranis as the creator of the video jockey. "There was no such thing" up to that point, so "the joke was that there would be such a thing"" recalled Short.

Moranis had a long career in feature films, including Ghostbusters; Little Shop of Horrors; and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and its sequels, as a result of his SCTV appearance and the Strange Brew film. Gravedale High (1990) was also the voice over for a short-lived cartoon series on NBC called Gravedale High.

Moranis was supposed to appear (as the janitor) in the 1985 film The Breakfast Club, but director John Hughes refused to cast him because his interpretation of the role was not what Hughes was looking for.

Barney Rubble of The Flintstones (1994) and the flop Big Bully (1996) were Moranis' last film roles. By the mid-1990s, I Shrunk the Kids sequels, he had only appeared in that segment, "Tomorrow's Girls," directed by Donald Fagen in 1993, in which he played a man married to an extraterrestrial woman. We Shrunk Ourselves, 1998's direct-to-video film Honey, is Disney's last film in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids franchise, in which Moranis is the last remaining original cast member. The show Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV show was also launched in 1997, but it did not include Moranis; it came to an end in 2000. In the 2003 animated film Brother Bear and its direct-to-video sequel, he appeared in Disney twice more (with fellow SCTV alumnus Dave Thomas).

Moranis talked about his favorite genres of films in a 2004 interview:

Moranis took a break from working in film in 1997. "I'm a single parent, and I'm sure it was too difficult to care for my children and do the traveling involved in making movies," he later explained. So I took a little break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer one, and then I discovered that I didn't miss it."

Moranis explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that despite declining an invitation to appear in 2016's Ghostbusters, he had not, in fact, resigned from acting in films, but instead had become more selective about future roles.

Moranis made his first film appearance since 1997 when he appeared in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Misfit Toys, as well as the Island of Misfit Toys.

Moranis was on the Humber College's Advisory Committee as of 2004.

Moranis released a CD titled The Agoraphobic Cowboy in 2005, which features country songs with lyrics that Moranis says follow in the commoons of songwriters/singers such as Roger Miller, Kinky Friedman, and Jim Stafford. The album was created by Tony Scherr and is distributed on ArtistShare as well as Moranis' official website. In 2003, he wrote "Out of the blue, I just wrote a few songs," he said, despite disagreeing on the sources of the songs. They're more country than ever, for the lack of a better explanation. And I'm not sure if I'm going to make them into a full-length video or a film at this point. I had a blast doing it, but boy, I had a blast doing it."

The Agoraphobic Cowboy was nominated for the Best Comedy Album at the 2006 Grammy Awards on December 8, 2005. Moranis appeared on "Press Pound" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on February 3, 2006, where he addressed his musical career's growth.

Moranis reunited with Dave Thomas in November 2007 for Bob and Doug McKenzie's 24th anniversary of naming Bob and Doug McKenzie, titled Bob and Doug McKenzie's 2–4 Anniversary. For this particular, the pair shot a new video. Thomas created Bob & Doug, Thomas' latest animated Bob and Doug McKenzie series for his company Animax Entertainment. Moranis declined to perform Bob, which was assumed by Dave Coulier, but remained involved as an executive producer.

Moranis released My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs, his first album in eight years, on June 18, 2013. "I'll first start writing parody and sketches with many Jewish friends, one of us will eventually stop and say, 'Too Jewish!' Moranis said of the new book. Too Jewish for the actor, the show, the network, or the audience. This album features songs from all around the country. In the 1960s, I grew up hearing the Allan Sherman and the You Don't Have to Be Jewish albums. Now that I am in my 60s, I am in my 60s.

Moranis talked about reprising his role as Louis Tully in a third Ghostbusters film and his dissatisfaction with the sequel in a June 2013 interview. "I haven't talked to Dan Aykroyd about it," Moranis said. 'I wouldn't do it, but it has to be good,' someone he's associated with called me and I said.' I'm not interested in doing anything I've already done, and the second one was a disappointment. I guess I'm curious about where the guy is now. I'd imagine him as Bernie Madoff's cellmate in prison. Both of them are so orderly that they have to get up and make their beds. "Ghostbusters didn't appeal to me" in 2015, after an invitation for a brief appearance in the 2016 film. I wish them well, but it doesn't make sense to me."

At a charity concert in Toronto, Moranis and Doug reprised their Bob and Doug characters. Jake Thomas, Dave Thomas' nephew, suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and the proceeds from the benefit went to help him care for him.

Moranis returned as the character Dark Helmet from Spaceballs in an episode of The Goldbergs on May 9, 2018, though as a witness.

Moranis appears in the Martin Scorsese-directed Second City TV reunion documentary An Afternoon with SCTV, which is scheduled to premiere on Netflix in 2021.

Moranis returned to Shrunk, a new sequel to the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids series, in 2020. If completed, Moranis will return to live-action films after a two-decade absence. Ryan Reynolds appeared in a Mint Mobile commercial later this year.

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