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. Another notable Moranis character on
SCTV was Gerry Todd, a disc jockey who presented music clips on television. The sketch aired before the debut of
MTV in the United States, leading both
Sound & Vision and
Martin Short to dub Moranis as the creator of the
video jockey. "There had been no such thing" up until that point, recalled Short, so "the joke was that there would be such a thing."
Feature films in
Walt Disney World 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 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:
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. , 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." In a June 2013 interview, Moranis talked about reprising his role as Louis Tully in a third
Ghostbusters film and his disappointment with the sequel. Moranis said, "I haven't talked to
Dan Aykroyd about it. Somebody he's associated with called me and I said, 'I wouldn't not do it, but it's got to be good.' You know, I'm not interested in doing anything I've already done, and I thought the second one was a disappointment. But I guess I'm interested in where that guy is now. I sort of see him as being
Bernie Madoff's cellmate in jail. Both of them being so orderly that they race to get up and make their beds." In 2015, regarding an offer for a brief appearance in the 2016 film, he concluded, "
Ghostbusters didn't appeal to me. I wish them well, but it just makes no sense to me." On May 9, 2018, Moranis returned as the character
Pannakin Crybaby / Lord Dark Helmet from
Spaceballs in an episode of
The Goldbergs, albeit as a voice. He also appeared in an episode of
Prop Culture discussing the film. Moranis appears in the
Martin Scorsese–directed
Second City TV reunion documentary, titled
An Afternoon with SCTV, set to premiere on
Netflix. In 2020, Moranis signed on to reprise his role as Wayne Szalinski in
Shrunk, a new sequel in the
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids series. If completed, it would mark a return to live-action films for Moranis after a hiatus of over two decades. The project, however, was put on indefinite hold in the 2020s due to the COVID-19 pandemic and
Disney+ moving away from long-form streaming content. Later in 2020, he appeared in a commercial for
Mint Mobile alongside
Ryan Reynolds.
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 for
Spaceballs: The New One would then wrap up in December 2025. ==Personal life==