Age, Biography, and Wiki
Dan Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is the son of Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd, a civil engineer, and Lorraine Hélène (née Gougeon), a secretary. Aykroyd's early life was marked by a strong connection to his family's history, which influenced his future career choices.
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 1 July 1952 |
| Age | 73 Years |
| Birth Place | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Horoscope | Cancer |
| Country | Canada |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 6 feet 1 inch (185 cm)
- Weight: Not publicly disclosed
- Measurements: Not publicly disclosed
In later decades, Aykroyd made occasional guest appearances and unannounced cameos on SNL, often impersonating the American politician Bob Dole. He also brought back past characters including Irwin Mainway and Leonard Pinth-Garnell. In 1995, he appeared on the show to introduce a performance by Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip. Aykroyd, who is a fan of the band, had personally lobbied Lorne Michaels to book them as musical guests.
| Height | 185 cm |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Dan Aykroyd has been married to actress Donna Dixon since 1983. The couple met on the set of the film "Doctor Detroit" and have been together ever since.
His father, Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd (1922–2020), a civil engineer, worked as a policy adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and his mother, Lorraine Hélène Marie (née Gougeon; 1918–2018), was a secretary. His mother was of French Canadian descent and his father was of English, Scottish, Irish, French, and Dutch ancestry. His paternal ancestor was Englishman Samuel Aykroyd from Halifax, Yorkshire, who emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Upper Canada near Kingston, Ontario in 1810. His brother, Peter (1955–2021), was also an actor.
He was known for his impersonations of celebrities such as Jimmy Carter, Vincent Price, Richard Nixon, Rod Serling, Tom Snyder, and Julia Child. He was also known for his recurring roles, such as Beldar, father of the Coneheads family; with Steve Martin, Yortuk Festrunk, one of the "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" brothers from Bratislava, Slovakia; sleazy late-night cable TV host E. Buzz Miller and his cousin, corrupt maker of children's toys and costumes Irwin Mainway (who extolled the virtues and defended the safety of the "Bag-o-Glass" toy); Fred Garvin, a male prostitute; and high-bred but low-brow critic Leonard Pinth-Garnell. Aykroyd and Jane Curtin parodied the Point/Counterpoint segment on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, which featured the liberal Shana Alexander and the conservative segregationist James Kilpatrick, by portraying the two as hating each another; Aykroyd's first words in response to Curtin's point were, "Jane, you ignorant slut!".
In 2001, Aykroyd starred in the Woody Allen film The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Most of his subsequent film roles have tended to be small character parts in big-budget productions, such as a father in Loser (2000), a signals analyst in Pearl Harbor (2001), a neurologist in 50 First Dates (2004), an annoying neighbor in Christmas with the Kranks (2004), and a fire captain in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007).
Aykroyd was briefly engaged to actress Carrie Fisher, proposing to her on the set of The Blues Brothers. In the film, she appeared as a jilted girlfriend of John Belushi's character Jake Blues. Their engagement ended when she reconciled with her former boyfriend, musician Paul Simon. On April 29, 1983, Aykroyd married actress Donna Dixon on a friend's rooftop in Martha's Vineyard. The couple met on the set of Doctor Detroit released the same year and appeared together in four additional films: Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), The Couch Trip (1988), and Exit to Eden (1994). Together, they have three daughters, including Danielle (known by her stage name, Vera Sola). The couple announced in April 2022 that they were separating after 39 years of marriage, but would remain legally married.
In a 2004 NPR interview with host Terry Gross, Aykroyd said that he had been diagnosed in childhood with Tourette syndrome (TS). He stated that his TS was successfully treated with therapy. In 2015, he stated during a HuffPost Show interview with hosts Roy Sekoff and Marc Lamont Hill that he has Asperger syndrome which was "never diagnosed", but was "sort of a self-diagnosis" based on several of his own characteristics, contradicting his earlier claim in the [Daily Mail] that he had been officially diagnosed in the early 1980s after his then wife Donna persuaded him to see a doctor.
Aykroyd's passions for the outdoors, geology and paleontology, which he attributes to watching his father work on constructing the Gatineau Parkway which included blasting through granite rock formations to run the highway, have led him to join Canadian paleontologist Philip J. Currie on a number of digs, including fundraising digs and galas as fundraisers for the construction of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Wembley, Alberta, which recognized Aykroyd's contributions by naming its theatre the Aykroyd Family Theatre.
On September 29, 2009, Peter Aykroyd Sr., Dan's father, published a book entitled A History of Ghosts. This book chronicled the family's historical involvement in the Spiritualist movement, to which Aykroyd readily refers. Aykroyd wrote the introduction and accompanied his father on a series of promotional activities, including launches in New York and Toronto, appearances on Larry King Live and Coast to Coast AM, and various other public-relations initiatives. Aykroyd also read the introduction for the audio version of the book. In 1997, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry awarded Aykroyd in absentia the Snuffed Candle Award for hosting Psi Factor and being a "long-time promoter ... of paranormal claims". Following the awards, Joe Nickell wrote to Aykroyd asking for the research behind the "cases" presented on Psi Factor, particularly a claim that NASA scientists were "killed while investigating a meteor crash and giant eggs were found and incubated, yielding a flea the size of a hog".
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| Husband | Donna Dixon (m. 1983-April 29, 2022) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Dan Aykroyd's net worth is estimated to be $250 million. His wealth comes from a successful career in film and television, as well as various entrepreneurial ventures.
Career, Business, and Investments
Aykroyd began his career as a member of the Second City comedy troupe in Toronto. He gained widespread recognition as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" from 1975 to 1979, where he created memorable characters and sketches. His film career includes starring roles in "The Blues Brothers," "Ghostbusters," and "Dragnet." Aykroyd has also been involved in various business ventures, including the co-founding of the House of Blues, a chain of blues-themed restaurants.
Aykroyd developed his musical career in Ottawa, particularly through his regular attendance at Le Hibou, a club that featured many blues artists. He describes these influences:
In 1992, Aykroyd and Hard Rock Cafe co-founder Isaac Tigrett founded the House of Blues, a chain of music venues, with the mission to host all genres of musical performances with a primary theme focused on blues music and folk art.
In 2016, Aykroyd partnered with TV producers Eric Bischoff and Jason Hervey and game developer Ike McFadden to release an online-casino game that features the Blues Brothers. Aykroyd provided the in-game voice of his Elwood Blues character via voiceover. Aykroyd is also owner in part of several wineries in Canada's Niagara Peninsula, and the company that distributes Patrón tequila in Canada.
Social Network
Aykroyd maintains a moderate presence on social media platforms, though he is not highly active compared to other celebrities.
Aykroyd's most famous roles are as Elwood J. Blues in The Blues Brothers (1980) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) and Dr. Raymond "Ray" Stantz in Ghostbusters (1984), and Ghostbusters II (1989) (he has reprised his role in various projects within the Ghostbusters franchise). He also is known for his comedic roles in 1941 (1979), Trading Places (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), Dragnet (1987), The Great Outdoors (1988), Nothing but Trouble (1991) and Coneheads (1993).
Aykroyd's eccentric talent was recognized by others in the highly competitive SNL environment; when he first presented his "Super Bass-O-Matic '76" sketch, a fake TV commercial in which a garish, hyper-pitchman (based on Ron Popeil) touts a food blender that turns an entire bass into liquid pulp, the other writers and cast members considered the sketch "so exhilaratingly strange that many remember sitting and listening, open-mouthed... Nobody felt jealous of it because they couldn't imagine writing anything remotely like it." Aykroyd later said that the inspiration for the sketch was seeing his aunt Helene Gougeon (a culinary writer and food columnist in Montreal) put a bass into a blender in order to make a bouillabaisse when he was 12 years old.
In the early 1980s, Aykroyd began work on a script for the film that eventually became Ghostbusters, inspired by his fascination with parapsychology and his belief in ghosts. The script initially included a much greater fantasy element, including time travel, but this was toned down substantially through work on the script with Harold Ramis (who became a co-writer) and director Ivan Reitman. Aykroyd originally wrote the role of Dr. Peter Venkman with Belushi in mind, but rewrote it for Bill Murray after Belushi's death. Aykroyd joked that the green ghost, later known as "Slimer", was "the ghost of John Belushi" and was based on Belushi's party-animal personality. Ghostbusters was released in 1984 and became a huge success for Aykroyd, who also appeared as one of the lead actors; the film earned nearly US$300million on a US$30million budget. Aykroyd also briefly appeared in the hit 1984 action-adventure film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as an escort with a British accent. Aykroyd's next major film role was in the 1985 spy comedy film Spies Like Us, which like The Blues Brothers was co-conceived and co-written by Aykroyd, and directed by Landis. Aykroyd had again intended for Belushi to be the other lead in the film; the part was instead given to SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. The film was intended as an homage to the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby Road to ... movies of the 1940s to 1960s. Bob Hope made a cameo appearance in the film.
In 2009, Aykroyd and Ramis wrote and appeared in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which also featured Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton, and Brian Doyle-Murray. In 2010, he played the voice of the title character, Yogi Bear, in the live-action/CGI-animated-film Yogi Bear. That same year, Aykroyd and Chevy Chase guest-starred in the Family Guy episode "Spies Reminiscent of Us", an homage to Spies Like Us.
Education
Aykroyd attended Carleton University in Ottawa, where he studied criminology and sociology. However, he did not graduate, opting instead to pursue a career in comedy.
He attended St. Pius X and St. Patrick's High Schools, and studied criminology and sociology at Carleton University, but dropped out before completing his degree. He worked as a comedian in various Canadian nightclubs and ran an after-hours speakeasy, Club 505, in Toronto for several years.
"There was a little disco club there called Le Hibou, which in French means 'the owl.' And it was run by a gentleman named Harvey Glatt, and he brought every, and I mean every, blues star that you or I would ever have wanted to have seen through Ottawa in the late '50s, well I guess more late '60s sort of, in around the Newport jazz rediscovery. I was going to Le Hibou and hearing James Cotton, Otis Spann, Pinetop Perkins, and Muddy Waters. I did actually jam behind Muddy Waters. S.P. Leary left the drum kit one night, and Muddy said 'anybody out there play drums? I don't have a drummer.' And I walked on stage and we started, I don't know, Little Red Rooster, something. He said 'keep that beat going, you make Muddy feel good.' And I heard Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett). Many, many times I saw Howlin' Wolf. As well as the Doors. And of course Buddy Guy, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. So I was exposed to all of these players, playing there as part of this scene to service the academic community in Ottawa, a very well-educated community. Had I lived in a different town I don't think that this would have happened, because it was just the confluence of educated government workers, and then also all the colleges in the area, Ottawa University, Carleton, and all the schools—these people were interested in blues culture."
In 1977, Aykroyd received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series for his collaborative work on Saturday Night Live. In 1994, he received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Carleton University. In 1999, Aykroyd was made a Member of the Order of Canada. He was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2002. In 2017, he was made a member of the Order of Ontario in recognition for being "one of the world's most popular entertainers, well-known for his time on Saturday Night Live and the 1984 classic movie Ghostbusters."
