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See Young Dan Aykroyd from His Saturday Night Live Years
At 23 years old, the Not Ready for Prime Time Player was the youngest original SNL cast member.
Dan Aykroyd's high-energy zaniness was part of Saturday Night Live's DNA since the beginning.
The native Canadian cut his teeth at The Second City's Toronto location. Aykroyd went on to be a Mainstage cast member of The Second City Chicago, where he befriended his future fellow Blues Brother John Belushi, in addition to a number of other members of the early SNL gang who were cast by SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
"See, we all knew each other. Gilda [Radner], and Billy [Murray], and Brian [Murray], his brother, and I all worked together up in Canada," Aykroyd said in a 1978 interview alongside Belushi. "Basically, I guess Lorne just had to look around for other talent, and finally grabbed the people he knew were ripe and ready to do it, you know?"
How old was Dan Aykroyd when he joined Saturday Night Live?
23.
First meeting Lorne Michaels as a teenager on the Canadian comedy scene, Aykroyd was the youngest of the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players when the show premiered in 1975.
RELATED: Why the First Saturday Night Live Cast Were Called The Not Ready for Prime Time Players
What years was Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live?
1975-1979.
In addition to being a member of the cast, Aykroyd was a writer on the series. He, along with the rest of the writing staff, won an Emmy for their work in 1977.
Aykroyd left the show in 1979 at the end of the fourth season, though he has returned over the years for cameos. His brother, Peter Aykroyd, joined the cast in Season 5.
Who did Dan Aykroyd play on SNL?
Aykroyd created a number of memorable characters and impressions over his formative years on the show. His impression of American chef Julia Child in the 1978 sketch "The French Chef" was especially over-the-top. He and Belushi originated the characters of the "Blues Brothers," who got their own movie in 1980.
He was also part of the recurring "Coneheads" sketch with Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, which became a movie in 1993.
Together with Harold Ramis, Aykroyd co-wrote and co-starred in the hit 1984 movie Ghostbusters, which spawned a franchise. Though not officially associated with SNL, the Ghostbusters movies have featured a number of the show's alumni over the years, including Bill Murray, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig and Leslie Jones.
RELATED: SNL Weekend Update Hosts Through the Years
In the same 1978 conversation, Aykroyd reflected, "It’s like a family, it really is, it really is. It’s not like some of those mills in Hollywood, where the writers are isolated from the performers, the scripts come out and they’re delivered by messenger 23 blocks away to the studio, and they come in and the cast looks them over, and the writers don’t have any process or say. On [SNL] every writer, if he chooses to, can produce his own piece."
