10 Awesome Things Bill Murray Has Done

Bill Murray—who was born on September 21, 1950—is known for popping up and doing something awesome every once in a while. Here are a few of our favorites.

1. Karaoked With Total Strangers

When a group of karaokers saw Murray enter NYC's Karaoke One 7 one night in January 2011, one of them worked up the courage to invite the movie star into their private karaoke room. Fifteen minutes later, Murray knocked on their door. "He was super nice and they all fit right in," one of the karaoke crew, Mike, told The Chive. "He bought us all a round of some weird green drink and wouldn't tell us what it was. ... The high point was when Bill and I sang a duet of an Elvis song called, 'Marie's the Name.'" Murray and his friends stuck around for the next four hours.

2. Walked Down a Hallway in Slow Motion

Why ask for Bill Murray's autograph when you can ask him to stroll down a hallway with you in slow motion? David Walton Smith told Reelz that he was making a commercial for a school in South Carolina that one of Murray's children attends; Murray was appearing in the spot. Smith didn't want to give Murray a bunch of things to autograph at the end of the shoot, and instead proposed asking the actor to walk with him and his friends down the hallway (they slowed it to slow motion in post). Murray, of course, obliged.

3. Got Invited to a Party, Did the Host's Dishes

Even when he's crashing parties, Bill Murray is polite. During a 2006 trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, for a celebrity golf tournament, Murray accompanied 22-year-old anthropology student Lykke Stavnef—whom he and his friends had met in a bar—to a house party. "Nobody could believe it when I arrived at the party with Bill Murray," she told The Telegraph. Murray then washed all the dishes in the students' sink. "It was really funny because he was pretty old compared with all the other people there, but he was so relaxed and it was really amusing when he started to wash up," Stavnef said.

4. Looked Great in a Christmas Card

“How and why I got this from Bill Murray, I have no idea!” wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper once tweeted. (The Frisky also published this card in 2012.)

5. Used an ice Luge at his Christmas Party

It should come as no surprise that, in addition to looking great on holiday cards, the actor throws epic Christmas parties, which he told Esquire include an ice luge for booze:

"It's a big magilla to get an ice luge, but if you do, you can pour vodka into it and it chills it on the way down. It looks like an Olympic ski jump. It's more for visual effect. You can put your head underneath it, like you're guzzling gasoline, but we just fill shot glasses. Hundreds of little shot glasses. So, we drank this stuff, and it took the party to a completely other level. The party lasted much longer. No one left. The year before, people would leave at, like, two or three in the morning. With the vodka luge, they didn't leave until five. The last two years I've had this luge. That's how I like to drink. Out of a large ice structure."

Murray Christmas, indeed.

6. Played Kickball with Random People

Kickballers enjoying a game on Roosevelt Island in October 2012 when Murray "popped out of nowhere," team member Chris DiLella told Entertainment Weekly. "He was bouncing the ball… ran over to second base. Played for a bit… Gave us all high-fives and let us pose with him in the picture."

7. Bartended at SXSW

During a visit to Austin's Shangri-La during SXSW 2010, Murray hopped behind the bar to serve drinks (apparently, even if a patron asked for whiskey, he'd give them tequila). Someone caught it on video, which you can see above.

8. Gave an Excellent Speech at a Bachelor Party

In 2014, Murray crashed a bachelor party in Charleston, South Carolina, and gave an excellent, impromptu speech:

"You know how they say funerals aren't for the dead but for the living? Bachelor parties are not for the groom, they are for [the other guys]. So, I'm going to give you all advice, because it's too late for this one. If you have someone you think is the one, don't just sort of think in your ordinary mind, think 'Okay, let's make a date, let's plan this and make a party and get married.' Take that person and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel all around the world and go to places that are hard to go to and hard to get out of. If when you come back to JFK [airport], when you land in JFK and you are still in love with that person, get married at the airport!"

Wise words.

9. Crashed a Couple's Engagement Photoshoot

Not long after he crashed that bachelor party, Murray happened upon Ashley Donald and Erik Rogers taking engagement photos in downtown Charlestown and decided to get in on the action. "When I set up Ashley and Erik, I saw this look of surprise on their faces as they looked over my shoulder. I asked them to look at the camera, but they just looked stunned and with his eyes, Erik motioned that I better look behind me," Raheel Gauba of Fia Forever Photography told the Huffington Post. "As I turned around to potentially ask the person distracting them to give us a moment, I see Bill Murray with his shirt up, belly out and patting it—his attempt to make the couple laugh. I joined the couple in the shock and surprise of the moment. At that point, I invited him to join the couple for a quick shot and he did. So genuine and nice of him to make the couple's day!"

10. Read Poetry to Construction Workers

When New York City's Poets House was being built in 2009, Murray showed up to read poetry to the construction workers. He began with Billy Collins's "Another Reason I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House," joking afterwards, "They get worse, OK, so if you want to lie down or get sick, take a sick day, do it now." He followed it with a poem for "the shorter attention span crowd," Lorine Niedecker’s "Poets Work" and finished with Emily Dickinson's "I Dwell in Possibility." Murray could not, unfortunately, get any of the workers to volunteer to read their own poetry.