Bill Murray profile: net worth, age, height, wife and children

Bill Murray, born William James Murray on September 21, 1950, in Evanston, Illinois, is a 76-year-old American actor, comedian and writer whose estimated net worth is $180 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He became famous on Saturday Night Live in the late 1970s, defined screen comedy in the 1980s with Caddyshack, Stripes and Ghostbusters, and reinvented himself as a dramatic actor with Rushmore and Lost in Translation, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He is currently unmarried, and he is the father of six sons, including Homer and Luke Murray and their brothers Caleb, Jackson, Cooper and Lincoln.

Quick facts

Biography and early life

William James Murray was born in Evanston, Illinois, on September 21, 1950, so his birthday falls in late September and he turned 76 in September 2026. He was raised in nearby Wilmette, in a large Irish Catholic family, the fifth of nine children. His father, Edward Joseph Murray II, was a lumber salesman, and his mother, Lucille, born Collins, worked in a mailroom. Murray and several of his siblings worked as golf caddies as boys, helping pay tuition at Loyola Academy, experience that later fed directly into the most famous scene of Caddyshack. His father died when Murray was 17.

After high school he enrolled at Regis College in Denver, planning to study pre-medicine. At 20 he was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport after authorities found about 10 pounds of marijuana in his luggage; he was convicted and received probation. He left his medical studies, returned to the Chicago area, and, at the encouragement of his older brother Brian, joined The Second City, Chicago’s famous improvisational comedy troupe. The deadpan, improvisational style he developed there became his trademark and the foundation of everything that followed. His family is the essential context for that start: three of his brothers became actors, and the Murray household produced an unusual concentration of American comedy talent.

Career: comedy, blockbusters and dramatic reinvention

Murray moved to New York and worked on The National Lampoon Radio Hour alongside John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd. His breakthrough came when Chevy Chase left NBC’s Saturday Night Live: Murray joined the cast in January 1977, during the show’s second season, overcame early resistance from viewers loyal to the original cast, and became one of its stars with characters including lounge singer Nick the Lounge Singer. He stayed until 1980 and shared the show’s 1977 Emmy Award for writing.

Film stardom followed immediately. He led Meatballs in 1979, played the groundskeeper Carl Spackler in Caddyshack in 1980, starred in Stripes in 1981 and appeared in Tootsie in 1982. In 1984 he played Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, one of the biggest hits of the decade, and returned for Ghostbusters II in 1989, with Scrooged in 1988 between them. After co-writing and starring in the poorly received The Razor’s Edge in 1984, he had largely stepped away from Hollywood for a period, studying in Paris, before returning to leading roles. The 1990s brought What About Bob? in 1991 and Groundhog Day in 1993, in which his trapped, sarcastic weatherman Phil Connors turned a comedy premise into a modern classic.

His second reinvention began with Wes Anderson’s Rushmore in 1998, where he played the industrialist Herman Blume with a sadness audiences had not seen from him before. It began one of the longest director-actor partnerships in modern film: The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch and, in 2025, The Phoenician Scheme. In Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation in 2003 he played the aging actor Bob Harris in Tokyo, winning the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Actor and earning his Academy Award nomination. He won an Emmy in 2015 for the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, returned as Venkman in Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021 and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in 2024, joined the Marvel films in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in 2023, and continues to choose projects selectively, famously working without a conventional full-time agent and receiving offers through a dedicated voicemail line. For hosts building an evening around a Murray film, a practical companion is a set of ideas for choosing party games to play with friends before or after the screening.

Movies and television shows

Murray’s best-known screen credits include the following.

• Saturday Night Live (1977-1980, television)
• Meatballs (1979) and Caddyshack (1980)
• Stripes (1981) and Tootsie (1982)
• Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989)
• Scrooged (1988)
• What About Bob? (1991) and Groundhog Day (1993)
• Kingpin (1996) and Space Jam (1996)
• Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
• Lost in Translation (2003)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and Olive Kitteridge (2014, television)
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Across five decades, the list moves from improvisational sketch comedy to blockbuster franchises to some of the most respected independent films of their era, without Murray ever fully leaving any of those worlds behind.

His later career also includes a celebrated self-parodying cameo in Zombieland in 2009, in which he played a version of himself, a leading dramatic role opposite Naomi Watts in St. Vincent in 2014, the voice of Baloo in Disney’s The Jungle Book in 2016, and a reunion with Sofia Coppola in On the Rocks in 2020. The pattern of these choices is consistent with the rest of his career: short, distinctive parts chosen for the director or the joke, taken alongside the franchise returns that keep his earliest characters in front of new audiences.

Net worth

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Bill Murray has a net worth of $180 million, and the site identifies the single largest source with unusual precision. Before the original Ghostbusters, Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman collectively negotiated 30 percent of the film’s revenues across box office, home video and television. Celebrity Net Worth estimates that the deal ultimately paid Murray roughly $75 million from the first film. For Ghostbusters II, the group received $6 million salaries plus a collective 35 percent participation, which the site estimates at roughly $50 million more for Murray, or about $125 million from the two films combined. It remains one of the most lucrative compensation arrangements in comedy film history.

The rest of his fortune reflects range rather than a single salary pattern. He was reportedly paid $6 million for Scrooged in 1988, a very large comedy salary for its time, and at the opposite extreme he worked on Rushmore for the Screen Actors Guild minimum, which director Wes Anderson has estimated at about $9,000, because he wanted the role. Five decades of film salaries, residuals from permanently popular films, voice work and business interests, including his part-ownership of minor league baseball teams such as the Charleston RiverDogs, where he holds the title Director of Fun, make up the balance of the $180 million estimate.

Personal life, family and siblings

The wife question has a clear answer: Bill Murray is not currently married, and both of his marriages are in the past. He married Margaret Kelly, known as Mickey, on January 25, 1981, after meeting her during the production of Stripes. They had two sons, Homer Murray, born in 1982, and Luke Murray, born in 1985, and divorced in 1996. He married costume designer Jennifer Butler on July 4, 1997. They had four sons together: Caleb Murray, born in 1993; Jackson Murray, born in 1995; Cooper Murray, born in 1997; and Lincoln Murray, their youngest son. Butler filed for divorce in 2008, and the divorce was finalized on June 13, 2008. She died in January 2021. Murray therefore has six sons in total. Homer became a restaurateur in New York, Luke became a college basketball coach, and Cooper has acted, including a small role in his father’s film Moonrise Kingdom.

His siblings are a story in themselves. Murray is the fifth of nine children of Edward and Lucille Murray, and three of his brothers are also actors: Brian Doyle-Murray, the older brother who pushed him into improvisation at The Second City and who co-wrote Caddyshack; Joel Murray; and John Murray. His eldest brother, Edward Murray III, known as Ed, was the real-life inspiration for the caddy Danny Noonan in Caddyshack and died in 2020. His brother Andy Murray is a chef and restaurateur associated with the family’s Murray Bros. Caddyshack restaurants. Of his sisters, Nancy Murray became an Adrian Dominican nun in Michigan who toured a one-woman program portraying St. Catherine of Siena, and his other sisters are Peggy Murray and Laura Murray. Golf runs through the family history from the brothers’ caddying years to the William Murray Golf clothing company the brothers later founded together.

Instagram and public presence

Bill Murray has no official Instagram account, and this article will not invent one for him. He does not maintain personal accounts on Instagram or X, and the many profiles using his name, photograph and film characters are fan pages, not Murray himself. His absence is consistent with the rest of his public life: no conventional agent, offers taken through a voicemail number, and a public presence built on filmed work and unannounced appearances rather than on feeds. The William Murray Golf account that appears in coverage belongs to the clothing business he runs with his brothers, not to Murray personally. Readers looking for his work should rely on film and trade-press announcements and treat any supposedly official Murray handle as unverified.

Closing summary

Bill Murray’s profile is a double career: the defining comedy star of the 1980s and, from Rushmore onward, one of the most respected dramatic actors of his generation. Born William James Murray on September 21, 1950, in Evanston to Edward and Lucille Murray, the fifth of nine children including actors Brian Doyle-Murray, Joel Murray and John Murray, he holds an estimated net worth of $180 million according to Celebrity Net Worth, built substantially on the Ghostbusters profit deals. The father of six sons, Homer, Luke, Caleb, Jackson, Cooper and Lincoln, from his marriages to Margaret Kelly and Jennifer Butler, he remains, at 76, famously unreachable by ordinary Hollywood channels and entirely reachable on screen.