Moranis, photographed Oct. 2 at his home in New York City (Wesley Mann)

By Ryan Parker

This story first appeared in the Oct. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

When the new all-female Ghostbusters reboot arrives in theaters next summer, nearly all the living actors from the original 1980s films — Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, et al. — will be doing cameos. But not Rick Moranis, who was offered the chance to appear in a walk-on role but turned it down. “I wish them well,” says the 62-year-old comedic legend, who’s so stunned by the outcry over his absence in the film that he decided to grant a rare interview with THR. “I hope it’s terrific. But it just makes no sense to me. Why would I do just one day of shooting on something I did 30 years ago?”

Contrary to what it says on his Wikipedia page — and to the fact that he barely has appeared onscreen in the past two decades — Moranis is not retired. Not exactly, anyway. He did take an 18-year hiatus from acting after his wife, Ann, died from breast cancer in 1997 to focus on raising his two young children (ever the overprotective father, he won’t reveal their names). But now that his kids have grown, the actor (“You know who would be great who I haven’t seen in a long time? Rick Moranis,” Fred Armisen said when asked about his dream collaborator at THR’s Comedy Actor Roundtable in August) is thinking about stepping back in front of the cameras again. He’s just really, really particular about which cameras.

Related: Bill Murray to Appear in ‘Ghostbusters’

“I took a break, which turned into a longer break,” he says. “But I’m interested in anything that I would find interesting. I still get the occasional query about a film or television role” — he’s repped by the Santa Monica-based endorsement firm Bailey Brand Management — “and as soon as one comes along that piques my interest, I’ll probably do it. [But Ghostbusters] didn’t appeal to me.”

A generation of comics has come and gone since Moranis first came to Hollywood during the early 1980s, riding the craze created by the McKenzie brothers, his Canadian beer-nuts bit with Dave Thomas on SCTV, which became a sort of pre-Internet-era meme (spawning a platinum comedy album in 1982, The Great White North, and a movie in 1983, Strange Brew). Of all the Canadian comics who broke through on SCTV, Moranis was the one who seemed to be building the most momentum. “He’s more than a funny actor, he is very creative,” says George Wyner, who played Colonel Sandurz opposite Moranis’ Dark Helmet in Mel Brooks’ 1987 Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs. “I always thought he would make a fantastic director.”

Related: Female Ghostbusters? Why Studios Want More Women-Led Blockbusters

Moranis never got the chance to carry a film the way his late countryman John Candy did. But he did land major roles in a series of hits, like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; Parenthood; Little Shop of Horrors; The Flintstones and, of course, the two Ghostbusters films (in which he played accountant Louis Tully, also known as the Keymaster, harbinger of Gozer the Destroyer). “I was working with really interesting people, wonderful people,” says Moranis of his Hollywood heyday before the death of his wife. “I went from that to being at home with a couple of little kids, which is a very different lifestyle. But it was important to me. I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever. My life is wonderful.”



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