New York--Woody wanted him. Britney wanted him. Even Uncle Sam, by way of director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, wanted him.
If Dan Aykroyd is dropping out of show business, as he recently was quoted as claiming, he's doing a lousy job. It's a performance that's even less convincing than the one that had the stocky fellow struggling into skintight bondage gear in the 1994 stinker Exit to Eden.
During the past year, he has shown up in the costume drama The House of Mirth, the war epic Pearl Harbor, the alien comedy Evolution, and now Woody Allen's homage to '40s noir The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, opening Friday.
And who you gonna call to play your father when you're a teen pop sensation bopping into your first movie? Connie Conehead's big daddy, that's who. Britney Spears rang up Aykroyd to ask him to be in What Are Friends For, due next year.
Oops, he's working again.
These days, most of the Saturday Night Live alum's parts are smaller and more dramatic than those in such '80s blockbusters as The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters. That's the way he likes it. At 49, Aykroyd has carved out a profitable niche as a reliable character actor.
"I'm really enjoying just kind of dropping into these great sets and working two, three weeks," says the Oscar nominee (for his supporting work in 1989's Driving Miss Daisy. "I call them my parachute/pop-rocket jobs. I parachute in and use all my skills and then pop-rocket out. I like to work as an actor without the burden of being the originator of the script, the producer, like I did in the '80s."
Nonetheless, while promoting Scorpion the Ottawa native told a Toronto Globe reporter the very same day: "I'd like to find and choose the last vehicle and exit on a really high, graceful, substantial note in film."
Actually, he has been making similar statements for ages. Disappointments such as 1998's Blues Brothers 2000 do take their toll. But his publicist, Susan Patricola, insists, "His imminent retirement is greatly exaggerated."
Aykroyd himself has been known to warp the truth. Take Maureen, his first wife. They supposedly wed in 1974 and she gave birth to three sons. Internet bios accept her as fact. But it's pure fiction, a lie that found it's way onto his Who's Who in America form.
"I felt at the time it was a very elitist thing. So I gave out some disinformation. Little did I realize it would continue. But that's OK. I will give $10 million to Maureen if she can come forward."
If she does, his wife of 18 years, actress Donna Dixon, mother of his three very real daughters, Danielle, 12, Belle, 8, and Stella, 3, might have something to say about it.
Aykroyd sounds nothing if not sincere, however, in his delight in sharing the screen with Allen. "To work in New York in the fall on a Woody Allen picture is like a peak Manhattan experience," he rhapsodizes. "I was very conscious of that, just the nip in the air and the snap of the leaves and just the whole electric feeling of being with an artist who's saying something in his work that's going to endure."
In Scorpion, he's the straight-man boss at the office where Allen's insurance investigator flirts with the steno pool. Aykroyd's married cad toys with the affections of Helen Hunt's efficiency expert, who later falls for Allen while under a hypnotist's spell. The actor knew the deal: "There's no chance you're ever going to win if you have Woody Allen as a romantic rival."
Allen never doubted his co-star had the right qualities. "He's got to be pompous and bombastic. You have to like him, even though he's a bad guy and a phony. He has to be attractive enough that you would believe she would go crazy over him. Dan Ayrkoyd has all that."
Similarly, Bay was convinced the onetime Wild and Crazy Guy could pull off the serious role of an ace code breaker whose gut tells him the Japanese are up to no good in Pearl Harbor. "He has a kind of period quality, a smart--- quality. He could be a head guy in the Navy."
About the backlash against the box office success, Aykroyd counters, "To me, the bottom line is it's very encouraging that my industry is taking on subjects like Pearl Harbor. The marriage of history and entertainment is wonderful."
Besides, he remembers how cruel some reviewers were when The Blues Brothers, the SNL spinoff in which he was harmonica-blowing Elwood opposite the late John Belushi's blues-wailing Jake, opened in 1980. "They would say 'Oh, they're blowing up cars.' But no one could touch the fact that we were reverential toward these artists and that the music was strong. I have sheets of reviews, and about 70% were favorable."
The Blues Brothers legacy carried on both in the House of Blues franchise he co-founded (a ninth club is about to open in San Diego) and the musical act that Aykroyd continues with Belushi's brother, Jim.
As for carrying on in the movies, he says, "I hope people continue to surprise me with their opportunities. I really do." That sure doesn't sound like the Hollywood blues.