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Fri 21 August 2026 21:15, UK
Misery loves company, and since Bill Murray has a habit of bringing misery to many places that he’s been in his big-screen career, it was only fair that he was on the receiving end for a change.
Whenever the comedy veteran has starred in something that’s been a struggle to make, he can usually place the blame on someone or something else. On Groundhog Day, it was his fracturing relationship with Harold Ramis, a feud that wasn’t resolved until the latter was on his deathbed.
On What About Bob?, it was his antagonistic relationship with co-star Richard Dreyfuss. On Scrooged, his issues with director Richard Donner conspired to make the festive favourite a miserable experience for both of them, and even during his Saturday Night Live days, Chevy Chase was his arch-nemesis.
Murray even made it a two-for-one special on Charlie’s Angels, with his unprofessional behaviour making him an enemy of Lucy Liu, while director McG’s claim that the star had almost broken his nose with a headbutt led the ‘Murricane’ to respond that the filmmaker would be much better off dead instead.
If you were to look at the two Murray-led pictures that were released in 2004 and forced to guess which one he described as being worse than imprisonment, you’d probably opt for Garfield, since he admitted that he only signed on for the animated flick because he thought one of the Coen brothers was involved, which still doesn’t explain why he agreed to return for the sequel, but money is likely the answer.
However, in the most unexpected turn of events, it was his Wes Anderson collaboration, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, that the droll icon loathed every second of. When he was informed that the dramedy would be shooting for three months, he was OK with it, but when it lasted for five, he was distraught.
“We get out there, and they said, ‘It could take into January,’” Murray recalled. “And it did, and it was just brutal.” Many of the scenes involved the ensemble cast being crammed into close quarters, and while that was only part of the leading man’s abject misery, he didn’t hold back in sharing his thoughts on the process.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
“It was a torturous experience,” he added. “I hated going to work. I was so miserable that it was a real challenge to work every day. It was what I imagined being in prison is like. Cold, really densely, brutally cold. I don’t know if I’m over it yet.” Maybe he wasn’t, and maybe that explains why he was such a dick to Anjelica Huston, too.
Anderson is one of only three people who can virtually guarantee that Murray will be in their movies, along with Sofia Coppola and Jim Jarmusch, but he might have been willing to give the former a second thought after The Life Aquatic quite clearly almost broke him.
