Frederick Allan Moranis (; born April 18, 1953) is a Canadian comedian and actor, known for roles in several feature films in the 1980s. He appeared in the sketch comedy series Second City Television (SCTV) in the 1980s. He then starred in several Hollywood films, including Strange Brew (1983), Streets of Fire (1984), Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequel Ghostbusters II (1989), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Spaceballs (1987), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989, and its 1992 and 1997 sequels), Parenthood (1989), My Blue Heaven (1990), and The Flintstones (1994).
Following the death of his wife in 1991, Moranis reduced his work in the entertainment industry, and beginning in 1997 he dedicated his time to their two children. During this period he performed occasionally, including a voice role in Disney's Brother Bear (2003), comedy albums, and appearances at fan conventions. In 2020, he signed to reprise his role from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, in a sequel, but the project was shelved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has signed to reprise the role of Dark Helmet in Spaceballs: The New One, scheduled for release in 2027.
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Early life
Moranis was born on April 18, 1953, in Toronto, Ontario, to a Jewish family. He attended elementary school with Geddy Lee, frontman of the rock band Rush.
Career
His career as an entertainer began as a radio disc jockey in the mid-1970s, using the on-air name "Rick Allan" at Toronto radio stations CFTR, CKFH, 1050 CHUM and CHUM-FM.
In the mid-1970s, Moranis and comedy partner Rob Cowan, also a budding young radio announcer, performed on CBC-TV. Their spoof of Hockey Night in Canada was popular, and they periodically performed it on the road, including a charity sports dinner in Sarnia, Ontario.
In 1977, he teamed up with Winnipeg-born writer/director and performer Ken Finkleman on a series of live performances on CBC's 90 Minutes Live; comedy radio specials; and television comedy pilots, including one called Midweek and another called 1980 (produced at CBC Toronto in 1979). Both pilots starred Finkleman and Moranis in a series of irreverent sketches, including an early mockumentary sketch featuring Moranis as a Canadian movie producer, and another featuring the dubbed-in voiceovers of Nazi war criminals as they appear to be discussing their Hollywood agents and the money one can earn being interviewed on major documentary series like The World at War.
In 1980, Moranis was persuaded to join the third-season cast of Second City Television (SCTV) by friend and SCTV writer/performer Dave Thomas. At the time, Moranis was the only cast member not to have come from a Second City stage troupe. He became especially noted for his impressions of celebrities such as Woody Allen, Merv Griffin, David Brinkley, George Carlin, Michael McDonald, and Teri Shields (mother of Brooke).
With SCTV moving to CBC in 1980 (and syndicated in the United States), Moranis and Thomas were challenged to fill two additional minutes with "identifiable Canadian content", and created a sketch called The Great White North featuring the characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, a couple of Canadian buffoons. By the time NBC ordered 90-minute programs for the U.S. in 1981 (the fourth season of SCTV overall), there had been such favourable feedback from affiliates on the McKenzies that the network requested the duo have a sketch in every show.
Bob and Doug became a pop-culture phenomenon, which led to a top-selling and Grammy-nominated album, Great White North, and the 1983 movie Strange Brew, Moranis's first major film role. He followed that up with the 1984 movie Streets of Fire.
Feature films
After his SCTV work, and the Strange Brew and Streets of Fire movies, Moranis had a busy career in feature films that lasted over a decade, most notably Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequel, Ghostbusters II (1989); Brewster's Millions (1985); Little Shop of Horrors (1986); Spaceballs (1987); Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and its 1992 and 1997 sequels; Parenthood (1989); My Blue Heaven (1990); and Barney Rubble in The Flintstones (1994). He also did the voice-over for a short-lived cartoon series on NBC called Gravedale High (1990).
Moranis was also slated to appear (as the janitor) in the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. After a week or so of filming, Moranis was released by producer Ned Tanen because he felt Moranis's interpretation of the role as an over-the-top Russian caricature was not appropriate for the serious nature of the film. Moranis presented the departure as a mutual decision and hoped to work with Hughes in the future.
Moranis was originally cast as Phil Berquist in the 1991 film City Slickers, but later dropped out before filming began due to his wife's illness.
Moranis's last film roles were the box-office flops Little Giants (1994) and Big Bully (1996). By the mid-1990s, his only appearance in the genre was a 1993 music video, "Tomorrow's Girls" by Donald Fagen, in which he played a man married to an extraterrestrial woman. Disney's final film in the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids franchise is 1997's direct-to-video film Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, in which Moranis is the final remaining original cast member. The series Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show also launched in 1997 but without Moranis; it concluded in 2000. He worked for Disney twice more (with his fellow SCTV alumnus Dave Thomas), voicing Rutt the moose in the 2003 animated film Brother Bear and its 2006 direct-to-video sequel.
In a 2004 interview, Moranis talked about his favourite kinds of films:
On the last couple of movies I made—big-budget Hollywood movies—I really missed being able to create my own material. In the early movies I did, I was brought in to basically rewrite my stuff, whether it was Ghostbusters or Spaceballs. By the time I got to the point where I was "starring" in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.
Acting hiatus
In 1997, Moranis took a hiatus from working in the film industry. He later explained, "I'm a single parent and I just found that it was too difficult to manage to raise my kids and to do the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it."
After declining to make a cameo appearance in the 2016 Ghostbusters film, Moranis clarified that he had not, in fact, retired from acting in films, but instead had become selective about future roles.
Later work
In 2001, Moranis received his first film credit since 1997 when he provided voice work in the animated film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys.
As of 2004, Moranis was on the Advisory Committee for the comedy program at Humber College.
In 2005, Moranis released an album titled The Agoraphobic Cowboy, featuring country songs with lyrics that Moranis says follow in the comic tradition of songwriters/singers such as Roger Miller, Kinky Friedman, and Jim Stafford. The album was produced by Tony Scherr and is distributed through ArtistShare, as well as Moranis's official website. Commenting on the origins of the songs, he said that in 2003, "Out of the blue, I just wrote a bunch of songs. For lack of a better explanation, they're more country than anything. And I actually demoed four or five of them, and I'm not sure at this point what I'm going to do with them—whether I'm going to fold them into a full-length video or a movie. But, boy, I had a good time doing that."
On December 8, 2005, The Agoraphobic Cowboy was nominated for the 2006 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. On February 3, 2006, Moranis performed "Press Pound" on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and discussed the development of his music career.
In November 2007, Moranis reunited with Dave Thomas for a 24th anniversary special of Bob and Doug McKenzie, titled Bob and Doug McKenzie's 2–4 Anniversary. The duo shot new footage for this special. Thomas subsequently created a new animated Bob and Doug McKenzie series, Bob & Doug, for his company Animax Entertainment. Moranis declined to voice the role of Bob, which was taken over by Dave Coulier, but remained involved in the series as an executive producer.
On June 18, 2013, Moranis released the comedy album titled My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs, his first album in eight years. Moranis said of the release, "When I first began writing jokes and sketches with various Jewish partners one of us would inevitably stop at some point and announce, 'Too Jewish!' Too Jewish for the star, the show, the network, or the audience. The songs on this album are all in that category. I grew up hearing the Allan Sherman and the You Don't Have to Be Jewish albums in the '60s. Now I am in my 60s."
Return to on-screen acting
In June 2025, Moranis signed on to reprise the role of Dark Helmet in the sequel to Spaceballs, which is scheduled for release in 2027. Filming for Spaceballs: The New One, which includes Moranis, began in September 2025, thus confirming that the film would result in Moranis making his return to on-screen acting for the first time since 1997. Filming on Spaceballs: The New One wrapped in December 2025.
Personal life
Moranis married make-up designer Ann Belsky in 1986 and together they had two children: a son and a daughter. Belsky died of breast cancer in February 1991. Moranis then slowly left public life to become a full-time single father.
On October 1, 2020, Moranis was assaulted in New York City in the vicinity of West 70th Street, Manhattan. He suffered minor injuries to his head, back and hip. He reported the incident to the New York Police Department, who posted security footage of the attack. On November 14, 2020, the perpetrator was arrested in New York City. In 2022, his attacker pled guilty in return for a sentence of two years in prison followed by three years of post-release supervision.
Filmography
Discography
Albums
1989: You, Me, the Music and Me
2005: The Agoraphobic Cowboy
2013: My Mother's Brisket & Other Love Songs
Bob and Doug McKenzie
1981: The Great White North
1983: Strange Brew soundtrack
Other soundtrack appearances
Audio/video
1973: "Rock Radio Scrapbook" (as Rick Allan)
