Early Life
Murray was born and raised in Wilmette, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago, the son of Lucille (née Collins), a mail room clerk, and Edward Joseph Murray II, a lumber salesman. Murray's father died in 1967 from complications of diabetes, when Bill was 17 years old. Murray, along with his eight siblings, was raised in a Catholic Irish American family. Three of his siblings are actors: John Murray, Joel Murray, and Brian Doyle-Murray. A sister, Nancy, is an Adrian Dominican nun in Michigan, who has traveled the United States in a one-woman program, portraying St. Catherine of Siena.
As a youth, Murray read children's biographies of American heroes like Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, and Davy Crockett. He attended St. Joseph grade school and Loyola Academy. During his teen years, he worked as a golf caddy to fund his education at the Jesuit high school. One of his sisters had polio and his mother suffered several miscarriages. During his teen years he was the lead singer of a rock band called the Dutch Masters and took part in high school and community theater.
After graduating, Murray attended Regis University in Denver, Colorado, taking premedical courses. However, he quickly dropped out, returning to Illinois. In 2007, however, Regis awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree.
Around 1971, police arrested Murray at Chicago's O'Hare Airport for trying to smuggle 9 pounds of marijuana which he had allegedly intended to sell.
Read more about this topic: Bill Murray
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.”
—Murray Bookchin (b. 1941)
“she bit the towel and called on God
and I saw her life stretch out . . .
I saw her torn in childbirth,
and I saw her, at that moment,
in her own death and I knew that she
knew.”
—Anne Sexton (19281974)