Dan Aykroyd: Playboy Interview

It's been a grueling 14-hour day on the set of The Coneheads. Suddenly, a strange sucking sound echoes off the walls. For the cast and crew it's the signal that they can go home—Dan Aykroyd is ripping the plastic cone off his head.
No longer dressed like Beldar the head Conehead, Aykroyd is shorter and happier. But he still has work to do. He's one of the writers as well as the star of The Coneheads, which he helped create as a skit back in the golden age of Saturday Night Live. Tonight, representatives from a toy company need to meet with him about a line of Conehead toys, the assistant director needs to discuss tomorrow's shots, his secretary hovers nearby to talk about juggling his schedule. When he finally gets to pass through the guarded gate to the parking lot, he's spotted by a few lingering stage-door johnnies. One, an eight-year-old boy, grabs a friend by the shoulder and squeals, "Look at that. It's Bill Murray!"
Aykroyd smiles and shakes his head. "Close," he says, "but no."
"I know you're a Ghostbuster," the boy counters. "Aren't you?"
"That I am," replies Aykroyd.
Indeed he is. Dan Aykroyd has been a Blues Brother, a Ghostbuster and a Conehead. He does killer impressions of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. He's won an Emmy and has been nominated for an Oscar and a Grammy. Yet he can still travel unrecognized—or at least be mistaken for Bill Murray.
Unlike others who have graduated from Saturday Night Live to success in films, Aykroyd is such a gifted sketch actor that he is better known for the characters he has played than as a comedic personality. Over the years, he's preferred to let his work speak for him, keeping a low profile in the media, while some of his SNL contemporaries—including a few who followed years later—achieved major stardom, burned out and are planning their comebacks.
Despite his 27 movies—some, like Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy, were blockbuster hits—Aykroyd will be forever linked to his days on SNL. His legendary moments range from the Weekend Update newscasts to send-ups of Nixon, Carter, Tom Snyder and Julia Child to skits featuring the Blues Brothers, Two Wild and Crazy Guys, Killer Bees and the Coneheads. He also was one half of the show's most outrageous comedy duo: Aykroyd and his best friend, John Belushi, were lauded as the Lennon and McCartney of comedy.
Together, Aykroyd and Belushi ventured into movies with 1941 and Neighbors. Two characters they created for SNL, Jake and Elwood Blues, moved to the big screen in the monster-budgeted Blues Brothers, in which dozens of police cars and an entire shopping mall were demolished. They also recorded best-selling albums and performed to sold-out audiences, even opening for the Rolling Stones and getting a Grammy nomination for best new artists. As Elwood, Aykroyd played a convincing harp and did one of the funniest and stiffest shuffles ever seen onstage.
When Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982, Aykroyd began a solo career. He thrived, landing starring roles opposite Eddie Murphy in Trading Places, Walter Matthau in The Couch Trip and Kim Basinger in My Stepmother Is an Alien. He co-wrote Ghostbusters, in which he starred with Harold Ramis and Bill Murray. It was the number-one-grossing comedy until it was topped in 1990 by Home Alone. Aykroyd also earned good reviews for his re-creation of the role of Sergeant Joe Friday in the movie version of Dragnet, another of his script-writing efforts.
Just when it seemed as if Aykroyd were destined to a career of sweet if often silly comedies, he was a surprising casting choice as the worried son in Driving Miss Daisy, directed by Bruce Beresford. The film won the 1990 Oscar for best picture, and Aykroyd earned a best supporting actor nomination. That was followed by a role in Sneakers with Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier. Next, Sir Richard Attenborough cast him in Chaplin, which he finished shortly before launching into The Coneheads with his boss at SNL, Lorne Michaels.
Aykroyd was born in Ottawa, Canada into a practical-joking, movie-watching family in which séances were typical Saturday-night entertainment. He attended Catholic schools and over the years worked at jobs that pointed many places other than show business. He drove mail trucks, load-tested runways for jumbo jets, surveyed roads and wrote a manual for penitentiary guards.
At Carleton University in Ottawa he became involved in a theater group, the first of several comedy ensembles he joined. He was soon appearing on Canadian TV in what he describes as a hip precursor to Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, which led to a stint with the Second City troupe in Toronto with co-stars Gilda Radner and John Candy. While in Toronto he met Belushi, then a performer with Second City in Chicago.
Like Belushi, Aykroyd had his wild years, though he says he preferred wine and beer to the heavy drugs that brought down Belushi. He loved hanging out with friends, and he opened the Blues Bar in lower Manhattan for late-night or, often, all-night parties.
Now his life is far quieter. On the set of Doctor Detroit, Aykroyd fell in love with his co-star, Donna Dixon (who appeared in Wayne's World). They married and have a daughter, Danielle, now three. The family spends as much time as possible at its 70-acre lakeside farm in Ontario. When the Aykroyds are there, the serenity of the Canadian nights is occasionally broken by the sound of one of Aykroyd's several modified Harley-Davidsons; he's an obsessed biker. He planned to head back to Canada as soon as The Coneheads wrapped.
Contributing Editor David Sheff, whose last tête-à-tête in these pages was with musician-philosopher Frank Zappa, took on the tête-à-cone. Here is Sheff's report:
"When I first met Aykroyd, in 1979, he had recently completed The Blues Brothers. He was a less-than-eager interview subject, seemingly uncomfortable talking about most aspects of his life. In the years since then, everything seems to have changed, not only in his life and career but in him. For this interview he was forthcoming and at ease. Often, he came across as overly earnest—almost corny—as if time had taken the rebel out of him. But there's no doubt he seemed genuinely happier.
"I met with Aykroyd on the set of The Coneheads, which was being filmed in Los Angeles. He was in costume for much of the interview, and I found it disconcerting, if somehow appropriate, to look up at him during impassioned conversations and realize I was talking with a Conehead."