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Dan Aykroyd is a Actor, Director, Scriptwriter and Producer Canadien born on 1 july 1952 at Ottawa (Canada)

Dan Aykroyd

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Birth name Daniel Edward Aykroyd
Nationality Canada
Birth 1 july 1952 (72 years) at Ottawa (Canada)
Awards Primetime Emmy Award

Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM (/ˈækrɔɪd/; born July 1, 1952) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and musician. He is known for being an original member of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" on Saturday Night Live, as Elwood Blues of The Blues Brothers (with John Belushi), and as Ray Stantz in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989).

He is also an entrepreneur, having co-founded the music venue chain House of Blues in 1992, and the vodka brand Crystal Head Vodka in 2007.

In 1990, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy.

Biography

Aykroyd is a permanent resident of the United States although he maintains his Canadian citizenship. Aykroyd was briefly engaged to Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher. He proposed to her on the set of The Blues Brothers (1980), in which she acted out a spurned girlfriend of John Belushi's Jake Blues who was trying to kill both, but the engagement ended when she reconciled with former boyfriend, musician Paul Simon.

In 1983, he married actress Donna Dixon, with whom he starred in the movies Doctor Detroit (1983), on whose set they first met, Spies Like Us (1985) and The Couch Trip (1988). They have three daughters, Danielle, Stella and Belle. He maintains his Canadian roots as a longtime resident of Sydenham, Ontario, with his estate on Loughborough Lake.

Aykroyd described himself (in a radio interview with Terry Gross) as having Tourette syndrome that was successfully treated with therapy when he was a preteen, as well as mild Asperger's. (At the time, Asperger's did not exist as a term.)

He is a former reserve commander for the police department in Harahan, Louisiana, working for Chief of Police Peter Dale. Aykroyd would carry his badge with him at all times.

He is also an Honorary Member of the Hinds County Sheriff's Department's Reserves in Hinds County, Mississippi. He supports the Reserves with a fundraiser concert along with other Blues and Gospel singers in the State of Mississippi.

Friendship with John Belushi
In an appearance on the Today show, Aykroyd referred to himself and John Belushi as "kindred spirits." In the biography "Belushi," Aykroyd claims that Belushi was the only man he could ever dance with.

Aykroyd and Belushi were scheduled to present the Academy Award for Visual Effects in 1982, but Belushi died only a few weeks prior to the ceremony. Though devastated by his friend's death, Aykroyd presented the award alone, remarking from the stage: "My partner would have loved to have been here to present this, given that he was something of a visual effect himself."

Aykroyd was openly hostile to the 1989 film Wired, a biopic of Belushi (which featured Aykroyd as a character), and has since refused to work with anyone involved in the film. He had actor J.T. Walsh fired from the film Loose Cannons after Walsh had already done two days of filming, after finding out that Walsh had been in the cast of Wired.

Beliefs

Aykroyd considers himself a Spiritualist, stating that:

I am a Spiritualist, a proud wearer of the Spiritualist badge. Mediums and psychic research have gone on for many, many years.... Loads of people have seen spirits, heard a voice or felt the cold temperature. I believe that they are between here and there, that they exist between the fourth and fifth dimension, and that they visit us frequently.
His great-grandfather, a dentist, was a mystic who corresponded with author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the subject of Spiritualism, and who was a member of the Lily Dale Society.

Other than Spiritualism, Aykroyd is also interested in various other aspects of the paranormal, particularly UFOlogy. He is a lifetime member of and official Hollywood consultant for the Mutual UFO Network. Along these lines, he served, from 1996 to 2000, as "host" of Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, which claimed to describe cases drawn from the archives of "The Office Of Scientific Investigation And Research." In 2005, Aykroyd produced the DVD Dan Aykroyd: Unplugged on UFOs. Aykroyd is interviewed for 80 minutes by UFOlogist David Sereda discussing in depth many aspects of the UFO phenomenon, and reveals specifically that they are blue, not green, but appear that way because of a filter.

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, Coast to Coast AM and various other public relations initiatives. Aykroyd also read the introduction for the audio version of the book.