Bill Murray Thinks Winning an Oscar Can Hurt Your Career, Wanting Awards Is "Like a Virus"

Funnyman also reveals what made him cry

By Marc Malkin Oct 14, 2014 4:13 PMTags
E! Placeholder Image

Bill Murray may be getting all kinds of Oscar buzz for his performance in the new comedy St. Vincent, but don't expect him to campaign for the big prize.

"I've never done that," he tells writer Ramin Setoodeh in the new issue of Variety. "I know that's something [Weinstein Company boss Harvey Weinstein] does—he forces you to do these things. I'm not that way. If you want an award so much, it's like a virus. It's an illness."

The 64-year-old funny man admits he had "been infected" when he convinced himself that he was going to go home with an Academy Award in 2004 for his work in Lost in Translation.

Not only did he walk away empty-handed, but he now believes winning an Oscar can hurt a career.

"People have this post-Oscar blowback," Murray says. "They starting thinking, 'I can't do a movie unless it's Oscar-worthy.' It just seems people have difficulty making the right choices after that."

The former Saturday Night Live star doesn't have an agent or a manager. He brokers his own deals and he despises email. He only has an old BlackBerry to keep in touch with his sons because they never "answer a phone call, but they will answer a text," Murray explains.

Director Cameron Crowe found out Murray would be in his next still-untitled film shooting in Hawaii with Emma Stone via a text from his young St. Vincent co-star Jaeden Lieberher that said, "Don't listen to the suits. I'm coming to Hawaii. Aloha, Bill."

"And that's how we found out he was going to be in the movie," Crowe said. "He told us through his 10-year-old co-star, who I immediately nicknamed Bill Murray's agent."

rollingstone.com

Fame, Murray insists, has never gone to his head. "I was kind of formed early on," he says. "People go, 'Oh you act like that because you're a big shot.' No, I always acted like a jerk. I come from a big family." (He's the fifth of nine kids!)

But he certainly has a soft side. In St. Vincent, he plays an alcoholic who befriends the son (Lieberher) of his neighbor (Melissa McCarthy). Murray admits he shed some tears when he saw the movie for the first time last month at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"It's an emotional movie," he says. "I had to stop crying because I realized I didn't want to be crying when the lights came up."