Frederick Allan Moranis (; born April 18, 1953) is a Canadian comedian and actor, famous for roles in several feature films in the 1980s. He appeared in the sketch comedy series Second City Television (SCTV) in the 1980s. He then starred in several Hollywood films, including Strange Brew (1983), Streets of Fire (1984), Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequel Ghostbusters II (1989), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Spaceballs (1987), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989, and its 1992 and 1997 sequels), Parenthood (1989), My Blue Heaven (1990), and The Flintstones (1994).
Following the death of his wife in 1991, Moranis reduced his work in the entertainment industry, and beginning in 1997 he dedicated his time to their two children. During this period he performed occasionally, such as a voice role in Disney's Brother Bear (2003), comedy albums, and appearances at fan conventions. In 2020, he signed to reprise his role from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, in a sequel, but the project was shelved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His first on-camera role in this period, he will reprise the role of Dark Helmet in Spaceballs: The New One, scheduled for release in 2027.
Early life
Moranis was born on April 18, 1953, in Toronto, Ontario, to a Jewish family. He attended elementary school with Geddy Lee, frontman of the rock band Rush.
Career
His career as an entertainer began as a radio disc jockey in the mid-1970s, using the on-air name "Rick Allan" at Toronto radio stations CFTR, CKFH, 1050 CHUM and CHUM-FM.
In the mid-1970s, Moranis and comedy partner Rob Cowan, also a budding young radio announcer, performed on CBC-TV. Their spoof of Hockey Night in Canada was popular, and they periodically performed it on the road, including a charity sports dinner in Sarnia, Ontario.
In 1977, he teamed up with Winnipeg-born writer/director and performer Ken Finkleman on a series of live performances 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 starred Finkleman and Moranis in a series of irreverent sketches, including an early mockumentary sketch featuring Moranis as a Canadian movie producer, and another featuring the dubbed-in voiceovers of Nazi war criminals as they appear to be discussing their Hollywood agents and the money one can earn being interviewed on major documentary series like The World at War.
In 1980, Moranis was persuaded to join the third-season cast of Second City Television (SCTV) by friend and SCTV writer/performer Dave Thomas. At the time, Moranis was the only cast member not to have come from a Second City stage troupe. He became especially noted for his impressions of celebrities such as Woody Allen, Merv Griffin, David Brinkley, George Carlin, Michael McDonald, and Teri Shields (mother of Brooke).
With SCTV moving to CBC in 1980 (and syndicated in the United States), Moranis and Thomas were challenged to fill two additional minutes with "identifiable Canadian content", and created a sketch called The Great White North featuring the characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, a couple of Canadian buffoons. By the time NBC ordered 90-minute programs for the U.S. in 1981 (the fourth season of SCTV overall), there had been such favourable feedback from affiliates on the McKenzies that the network requested the duo have a sketch in every show.
Bob and Doug became a pop-culture phenomenon, which led to a top-selling and Grammy-nominated album, Great White North, and the 1983 movie Strange Brew, Moranis's first major film role. He followed that up with the 1984 movie Streets of Fire.
Another notable Moranis character on SCTV was Gerry Todd, a disc jockey who presented music clips on television. The sketch aired before the debut of MTV in the United States, leading both Sound & Vision and Martin Short to dub Moranis as the creator of the video jockey. "There had been no such thing" up until that point, recalled Short, so "the joke was that there would be such a thing."
Feature films
thumb|The handprints of Rick Moranis in front of the Chinese Theatre at [[Disney's Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World]]
After his SCTV work, and the Strange Brew and Streets of Fire movies, Moranis had a busy career in feature films that lasted over a decade, most notably Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequel, Ghostbusters II (1989); Brewster's Millions (1985); Little Shop of Horrors (1986); Spaceballs (1987); Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and its 1992 and 1997 sequels; Parenthood (1989); My Blue Heaven (1990); and Barney Rubble in The Flintstones (1994). He also did the voice-over for a short-lived cartoon series on NBC called Gravedale High (1990).
Moranis was also slated to appear (as the janitor) in the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. After a week or so of filming, Moranis was released by producer Ned Tanen because he felt Moranis's interpretation of the role as an over-the-top Russian caricature was not appropriate for the serious nature of the film. Moranis presented the departure as a mutual decision and hoped to work with Hughes in the future.
Moranis was originally cast as Phil Berquist in the 1991 film City Slickers, but later dropped out due to his wife's illness.
Moranis's last film roles were the box-office flops Little Giants (1994) and Big Bully (1996). By the mid-1990s, his only appearance in the genre was a 1993 music video, "Tomorrow's Girls" by Donald Fagen, in which he played a man married to an extraterrestrial woman. Disney's final film in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids franchise is 1997's direct-to-video film Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, in which Moranis is the final remaining original cast member. The series Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show also launched in 1997 but without Moranis; it concluded in 2000. He worked for Disney twice more (with his fellow SCTV alumnus Dave Thomas), voicing Rutt the moose in the 2003 animated film Brother Bear and its 2006 direct-to-video sequel.
In a 2004 interview, Moranis talked about his favourite kinds of films: