Bill Murray has a history of on-set drama.
The “Lost in Translation” star is beloved for his many screen appearances and Zelig-like way of popping up in unlikely places to interact with people, but he’s also known for his mercurial nature. Pal Dan Aykroyd even nicknamed him “The Murricane” to describe his mood swings.
Amid the current investigation against Bill Murray for “inappropriate behavior” on the set of “Being Mortal,” take a look back at some of Murray’s most notorious feuds over the years.
Chevy Chase
Murray infamously got into a physical altercation with Chase in 1978 when the “National Lampoon’s Vacation” star returned to “Saturday Night Live” as a guest host. According to the book “Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,” it began with the two trading insults. Murray told Chase to go have sex with Jacqueline Carlin, Chase’s then-wife, while Chase childishly retorted that Murray’s face looked “like something Neil Armstrong landed on.” It quickly escalated to a physical dustup witnessed by cast members Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner.
Newman described the fight as “very sad and painful and awful” during a June 2021 appearance on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.”
Murray, for his part, called the incident an “Oedipal thing, a rupture” in a May 2012 Empire magazine interview, adding, “Because we all felt mad he had left us, and somehow I was the avenging angel, who had to speak for everyone. But Chevy and I are friends now. It’s all fine.”
The pair starred together in the 1980 comedy “Caddyshack.”
Richard Donner
Murray is said to have clashed with Donner, who directed him in 1988’s “Scrooged.” Donner later gave a true Hollywood backhanded compliment when he described the movie’s star as “superbly creative but occasionally difficult” — before quickly clarifying, “As difficult as any actor.”
Richard Dreyfuss
Oscar winner Dreyfuss said Murray was a “drunken bully” when they worked together on the 1991 film “What About Bob?”
“Bill just got drunk at dinner,” he recalled in a Yahoo! interview in June 2019. “He was an Irish drunken bully, is what he was.”
Reflecting on one incident in particular, Dreyfuss said that all hell broke loose when he asked Murray to read a tweak in the script.
“He put his face next to me, nose-to-nose, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Everyone hates you! You are tolerated!’” he said.
Dreyfuss continued, “There was no time to react because he leaned back and he took a modern glass-blown ashtray. He threw it at my face from [only a couple feet away]. And it weighed about three-quarters of a pound. And he missed me. He tried to hit me. I got up and left.”
Laura Ziskin
Dreyfuss wasn’t the only person to have an issue with Murray on “What About Bob?”
Producer Ziskin once said a disagreement between them resulted in Murray tossing her into a lake, although she called it “playful.”
Not so playful was Ziskin’s claim to the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that “Bill also threatened to throw me across the parking lot and then broke my sunglasses and threw them across the parking lot.”
Harold Ramis
Sadly, Murray had a decades-long estrangement from longtime pal and collaborator Ramis.
Their friendship collapsed on the set of 1993’s “Groundhog Day” when Ramis grabbed Murray by the shirt collar and threw him against a wall during a heated creative dispute.
Ramis’ daughter Violet Ramis Stiel revealed in her 2018 book, “Ghostbuster’s Daughter: Life with My Dad, Harold Ramis,” that Murray wouldn’t speak to his old pal for over 20 years. She said her dad “tried not to take it personally,” but he felt “heartbroken, confused and yet unsurprised by the rejection.”
Just before Ramis died in February 2014, Murray showed up unannounced at 7 a.m. one day with a box of doughnuts and a police escort. Ramis, who had autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, had lost the ability to speak by then, however, but Murray hung out for a couple of hours anyway.
McG
“Charlie’s Angels” director McG, whose real name is Joseph McGinty Nichol, claimed that Murray headbutted him on the set of the 2000 movie.
“Square in the head,” he told the Guardian in May 2009. “An inch later and my nose would have been obliterated.”
Murray vehemently denied the claim.
“That’s bulls–t! That’s complete crap!” he exclaimed in an interview with the Times of London in October 2009. “I don’t know why he made that story up. He has a very active imagination.”
Murray even took things a step further by saying that McG “deserves to die” for suggesting such a thing.
Lucy Liu
Liu alleged that Murray began to argue with her on the “Charlie’s Angels” set using language that was “inexcusable and unacceptable.”
“I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it,” she said on the Los Angeles Times’ “Asian Enough” podcast in July 2021. “Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down. And I would not stand down, and nor should I have.”
Later, she reiterated: “I’m not going to sit there and be attacked. … I don’t want to be that person that is not going to speak up for myself and stand by the only thing that I have, which is my dignity and self-respect.”
Murray downplayed the incident in his October 2009 interview with the Times of London, saying: “Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me. … When our relationship is professional, and you’re not getting that done, forget it.”
Anjelica Huston
The “Prizzi’s Honor” star labeled Murray “a s–t” after they worked together in Wes Anderson’s 2004 film “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”
“The first week I was there, we were all in this little hotel, and he invited the entire cast to go and have dinner, except me,” Huston told Vulture in May 2019. “And everyone came down for dinner, a little dog-faced about my not being invited, and they were all like, ‘Oh, you know, we don’t really want to go.’ That was worse than anything.
“I was really hurt,” she continued. “And then I think we met again in Florence, because that movie was shot all over Italy, and we were doing a scene at Gore Vidal’s house in Ravello, and [Murray] said, ‘Hey, how’ve you been? I missed you.’ I said, “You’re full of shit. You didn’t miss me.’ He looked all confused for a moment.”
But in true Murray form, he did atone.
“He showed up at my husband [Robert Graham]’s funeral,” Huston said. “He couldn’t have been nicer that day. He showed up. A lot of people didn’t.”
