Bill Murray doesn’t consider himself an “artist” but he knows who is
The world of Bill Murray must be an excellent place for an artist to live. The actor lives a perceivable vicarious life in which he floats from project to project, seemingly rarely taking himself out of his preferred workstream, tubing down the river like a Hollywood Baloo. It’s a perception that Murray has worked hard at creating too. He has famously spent much of the last two decades working at bars, photobombing engagement shoots and providing a toll-free number for movie makers to contact him.
Perhaps more so than any actor working today, the feeling that Bill Murray would rather be a rock star, a painter, a poet or simply your friendly neighbourhood tramp than the high-grossing Hollywood icon he is. It makes sense, then, that when posed the question of whether he believes himself as an actor should be considered “an artist,” he was somewhat dismissive of the notion.
During a conversation with The Talks, Murray opened up about his own career and how he perceives himself as an actor. While most of his contemporaries would offer some smiling platitudes of humility before unleashing their inner ego, Murray was far more refined and offered up a succinct and self-deprecating view of his career: “You know, I was talking with a man earlier who told me, ‘You have reached your blue period,’ which I thought was really funny, it made me laugh very hard! I can’t wait to tell my brother that one.”
Reflecting on the question at hand, Murray continued: “But do I consider myself an artist? No, but I aspire to be. And I can be like that; I can be artistic every once in a while. I think there are things that are artistic, or things that an artist would do, but they don’t necessarily mean you are an artist. You can have moments of art history, but not necessarily be an artist.”
So, if “artist” is too highfalutin a term for the Ghosbusters star, then what is the correct moniker for Murray’s line of work? It would seem the “impersonator” is his favoured option: “That’s pretty much more like it!” But what makes a real artist for Murray? Well, the answer has been under our noses all along, Bill Murray believes in the supreme art of living.
“To be a real artist, I think, is really about the art of living,” he explained. “The guys who are real artists are people who have figured out the art of living, and that their art is art because they live. They have made living an art, they have made an art of living. And that they are constantly inputting life as opposed to expressing life. It’s more intake than output.”
If there’s a better motto for living life in a more carefree way, then we haven’t heard it yet.
