Dan Aykroyd

Daniel Edward Aykroyd was born on 1 July 1952 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to Samuel Peter Hugh Aykroyd, a civil engineer and government adviser, and Lorraine Hélène Gougeon, a secretary of French-Canadian descent. His father worked in the Canadian federal government, including as an adviser to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Aykroyd grew up in Ottawa alongside his younger brother Peter, who also became an actor and writer. He attended St. Pius X High School, a Catholic institution where he initially received an education intended to prepare boys for the priesthood, before continuing at St. Patrick’s High School. His interest in comedy developed during his school years, although he also considered a career in law enforcement. Away from Ottawa, the family maintained a longstanding connection to the countryside north of Kingston, particularly the village of Sydenham, where generations of Aykroyds had lived since the nineteenth century.

The family’s rural property near Loughborough Lake would eventually become one of the most significant places in Aykroyd’s life. His ancestors had acquired land in the area in 1826, and the family farmhouse, built around 1860, contained a room where his great-grandfather Samuel Aykroyd conducted séances with local mediums during the early twentieth century. The family also accumulated books and research material concerning spiritualism, psychic phenomena and communication with the dead. Aykroyd inherited this interest and became a lifelong student of paranormal claims, an enthusiasm that would eventually provide the inspiration for Ghostbusters. He has continued to use the Ontario property as a residence, spending part of each year there despite his long career in the United States.

After finishing school, Aykroyd enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa, studying criminology, sociology and political science. He participated in the university’s Sock ‘n’ Buskin theatre company while considering employment in the Canadian corrections system. During one summer, he worked for the Penitentiary Service of Canada, and another government job took him into northern Canada as a survey worker and mechanic. It was during this period that he developed his harmonica playing, an interest that would later become central to his musical career. His first professional comedy experience came in 1969, when he appeared in a television production involving Lorne Michaels. He also worked with fellow Ottawa performer Valri Bromfield, with whom he created comedy sketches for local cable television. The partnership helped persuade him to abandon his university studies and move to Toronto, where more opportunities were available in television and live performance.

In 1973, Aykroyd joined the Toronto company of The Second City, the improvisational comedy organisation founded in Chicago. The troupe performed at the Old Fire Hall at 110 Lombard Street, a former fire station that became an important centre of Canadian comedy. Among the performers associated with the company during this period were Gilda Radner, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy. Aykroyd also became involved in Toronto’s nightlife, operating an after-hours drinking club known as the 505 at 505 Queen Street East, near the intersection with River Street. The establishment attracted musicians, actors, restaurant workers and others seeking somewhere to socialise after the city’s licensed bars had closed. In 1973, John Belushi visited Toronto while recruiting performers for the National Lampoon Radio Hour and met Aykroyd through The Second City. Their friendship developed partly through a shared enthusiasm for American blues and soul music, particularly the recordings of the Toronto-based Downchild Blues Band. Aykroyd also appeared in the Canadian children’s television comedy Coming Up Rosie (1975–1978), playing a building caretaker alongside several performers who would later become familiar television stars.

Aykroyd’s association with Lorne Michaels brought him to New York in 1975 when Michaels assembled the original cast and writing staff of Saturday Night Live. Although initially hired as a writer, Aykroyd became one of the programme’s principal performers, working alongside Belushi, Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Garrett Morris. The show was produced at NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with performances broadcast from Studio 8H. Aykroyd spent much of his working life in the building, where writers and performers frequently worked through the night preparing the weekly programme. His characters included Beldar Conehead, the fast-talking salesman Irwin Mainway and Elwood Blues, while his impressions ranged from American politicians to television personalities. He won an Emmy Award for his writing in 1977 and remained with the programme until 1979. During these years, he also maintained strong ties to Ontario, frequently travelling between New York and the family property near Kingston.

The Blues Brothers developed from Aykroyd and Belushi’s musical interests into a performing act accompanied by professional musicians. Aykroyd played harmonica and portrayed Elwood Blues, while Belushi became the singer Jake Blues. Their debut album, Briefcase Full of Blues (1978), was a major commercial success and led to a feature film directed by John Landis. Aykroyd had already appeared alongside Belushi in Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), but The Blues Brothers (1980) gave the partnership its defining screen roles. Much of the film was shot in Chicago and its surrounding communities during 1979, including downtown streets, the former Dixie Square shopping centre in Harvey and Joliet Correctional Center. The production made extensive use of Chicago’s architecture, musical history and local performers, with appearances by Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker. Aykroyd was closely involved in developing the screenplay, which incorporated places and musicians connected to the American blues tradition. During filming, he began a relationship with actress Carrie Fisher, who also appeared in the film. The couple became engaged but separated before marrying.

Belushi and Aykroyd reunited for Neighbors (1981), although their partnership ended abruptly when Belushi died of a drug overdose at the Chateau Marmont hotel in West Hollywood on 5 March 1982. Aykroyd subsequently continued developing film projects independently, including a supernatural comedy he had originally conceived with Belushi in mind. His career was already expanding beyond their partnership, and in 1983 he appeared opposite Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, directed by John Landis, as well as in Doctor Detroit and the opening sequence of Twilight Zone: The Movie. While working on Doctor Detroit, Aykroyd met actress Donna Dixon. They married in April 1983 and subsequently appeared together in several productions, including Spies Like Us (1985) and The Couch Trip (1988). The couple eventually had three daughters, Danielle, Belle and Stella.

The supernatural project became Ghostbusters (1984), which Aykroyd developed with Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman. His original concept was substantially revised into a story about three unemployed scientists establishing a paranormal investigation business in New York City. Aykroyd played Ray Stantz alongside Bill Murray, Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Filming began in October 1983, with major exterior sequences shot in Manhattan at locations including the New York Public Library, Columbia University and the firehouse of Hook & Ladder Company No. 8 on North Moore Street in Tribeca. Interior scenes were largely filmed in California, where the former Fire Station 23 at 225 East 5th Street in Los Angeles served as the interior of the Ghostbusters headquarters. Additional sets were constructed at The Burbank Studios, including an enormous recreation of the rooftop of the apartment building represented by 55 Central Park West. The film became an international commercial success and established one of Aykroyd’s most enduring characters. Its origins remained unusually personal: the paranormal research preserved at his family’s farmhouse near Sydenham had helped shape the ideas behind the screenplay.

Throughout the remainder of the 1980s, Aykroyd alternated between writing, starring in and producing comedies. He appeared with Chevy Chase in Spies Like Us (1985), played a Los Angeles police detective in Dragnet (1987) and reunited with John Candy in The Great Outdoors (1988). Ghostbusters II (1989) brought him back to Ray Stantz and the familiar New York setting. During the same period, he demonstrated his abilities outside comedy with the role of Boolie Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), opposite Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. The film was shot in and around Atlanta, Georgia, where its story takes place, and Aykroyd received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The recognition came after more than a decade of work primarily associated with sketch comedy and popular entertainment. In 1991, he made his feature-film directorial debut with Nothing But Trouble, a dark comedy starring Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, John Candy and Aykroyd himself. The production was filmed in Los Angeles but failed commercially, and he did not pursue a substantial career as a film director.

Aykroyd remained active in American cinema throughout the 1990s, appearing in My Girl (1991), Chaplin (1992), Coneheads (1993), Tommy Boy (1995) and Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Coneheads reunited him with Jane Curtin in a feature-length adaptation of their Saturday Night Live characters, while Grosse Pointe Blank placed him opposite John Cusack as a rival professional assassin. He also returned to television as the lead in Soul Man (1997–1998), playing an Episcopal minister raising four children in suburban Detroit. During this period, his involvement with music developed into a substantial business interest. In 1992, Aykroyd and entrepreneur Isaac Tigrett established the first House of Blues in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, at 96 Winthrop Street. The club combined live blues performances with a restaurant and became the starting point for a chain of venues across the United States. Although the original Cambridge establishment closed in 2003, the business expanded to cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Boston, bringing Aykroyd into contact with musicians and promoters beyond his work in film.

In 1998, he returned to Elwood Blues in Blues Brothers 2000, again directed by John Landis. Although the film continued the Chicago-based story of the original, much of its production took place in Ontario, including Toronto and the surrounding region. Millhaven Institution, a federal prison near Kingston, was used for the sequence in which Elwood is released from custody, while the Markham Fairgrounds and other Canadian locations represented parts of the American Midwest and South. Aykroyd continued performing as Elwood Blues with musicians associated with the original band, frequently joined by John Belushi’s younger brother Jim. His contributions to entertainment and charitable activities in Canada were formally recognised when he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998, with his investiture taking place the following year. He had previously received an honorary doctorate from Carleton University in 1994 and was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2002.

During the 2000s, Aykroyd continued acting in films including Pearl Harbor (2001), The House of Mirth (2000), 50 First Dates (2004) and Christmas with the Kranks (2004), although business activities increasingly occupied his time. He became involved in the Canadian wine industry, investing in vineyards on the Niagara Peninsula and developing wines under his own name. His most widely recognised commercial venture followed in 2008 with the launch of Crystal Head Vodka, created with American artist John Alexander. The vodka is produced in St. John’s, Newfoundland, using Canadian ingredients, and its distinctive skull-shaped bottle reflects Aykroyd’s longstanding fascination with archaeology, spiritualism and unexplained phenomena. The business has provided another enduring connection to Canada, where he has continued to maintain a residence and participate in cultural and charitable activities.

Aykroyd’s family background also became the subject of A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters (2009), written by his father, Peter H. Aykroyd, with a foreword by Dan. The book explored the family’s involvement in spiritualist research and the history of the farmhouse near Sydenham. Aykroyd continued discussing paranormal subjects publicly, appearing in programmes about unexplained events and eventually hosting The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd, which began in 2023. His interest in the subject remained independent of his fictional work, although Ghostbusters continued to provide the most recognisable link between his personal beliefs and his film career.

He returned to the Ghostbusters franchise with a cameo in the 2016 reboot and reprised Ray Stantz in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021). Although the latter film is set principally in Oklahoma, its rural American locations were largely recreated in Alberta, Canada, with production taking place around Calgary, Drumheller and Fort Macleod. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) again featured Aykroyd alongside several original cast members. The sequel returned the story to New York City, although much of the filming was carried out in England, including studios outside London. Aykroyd remained involved with the franchise as an executive producer, while his appearances alongside Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson connected the newer films to the characters they had first played four decades earlier.

In his personal life, Aykroyd has maintained homes in several places associated with different periods of his career. In addition to the ancestral property near Sydenham, he has owned a home on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, an area closely associated with his friendship with John Belushi, and has spent time at residences in Los Angeles and the Virgin Islands. He and Donna Dixon announced their separation in 2022 after 39 years of marriage, although they remained legally married and continued their family and business relationship. Their eldest daughter, Danielle, pursued a musical career under the name Vera Sola. In interviews during 2024, Aykroyd described dividing his time between Ontario, Martha’s Vineyard, the Virgin Islands and visits to his family in Los Angeles. He continued spending summers near Kingston, where the family farmhouse and its collection of spiritualist material remain part of his life more than forty years after helping inspire Ghostbusters.

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