Dan Aykroyd almost lost his passion for performing due to a terrifying event that he experienced as a child. During his appearance on the Fly on the Wall podcast with Dana Carvey and David Spade, the 71-year-old actor opened up about a certain chain of events that led him to lose his motivation for acting for a little while.
Dan, who grew up in Canada, mentioned that the incident happened when he was in the third grade. Of course, at such a young age, one can scare pretty easily. Dan has his friends at the time to blame for what terrified him.
"They're doing an Irish St. Patrick's Day concert and they compelled me to learn 'McNamara's Band.' They put me in a green bowler and a green vest and green pants and leprechaun shoes," the actor began. To his surprise, his performance got an amazing reaction from the crowd.
"I get to the end and give the tap dance finish, and they're howling, the crowd." He went on to say that he thought to himself at the time, "'Whoa. Really? You like that that much?'"
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After his moment of fame, Dan stepped off stage to his friends who had other ideas for how the night would end. "Two of my friends come up and say, 'Hey, that was nothing, man,'" he recalled.
What they had in mind was to take Dan to the funeral home across the street. But of course, the young boy didn't know what he was in for.
"I go from the elation of singing 'McNamara's Band' and getting cheered to, two minutes later, walking into the funeral home where seven bodies are laid out," the actor explained. "A family that had drowned in a car the night before. Seven. The father, the mother, the brothers, the sisters."
Dan went on to say he still can remember the details of the bodies. That experience made him lose interest in performing for a long while. "I didn't do any gigs for years and years afterward," he said. "That turned me right off performance."
However, by the time he was 12, Dan was back into acting. He shared that he was working on improv and honing the skills that would later land him in his roles on Second City and Saturday Night Live.
Dan has been on the entertainment scene since the '70s. He began on SNL at 23 years old. Now, he is starring in the upcoming Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
