Billy Murray is one of those mythical legends in Hollywood.
So many stories surrounding Murray come with a cloak of mystery – did he really eat fries off someone’s plate and tell them “nobody will ever believe you” (yes), and is it true he has no cell phone, or phone number he’ll answer to, just an answering machine (yup)?
As his legend grows, we do have some insight into Murray’s top-notch muscial taste.
He loves John Prine, and actually said his music helped him through depression.
That openness brings us to this resurfaced video from 2014 when Bill was in London on a press tour for The Monuments Men. In the clip that has gone viral yet again, Murray describes a rough acting night in Chicago where he ended up wandering the streets for hours, losing his “desire to stay alive.”
Here he is explaining that dark time, and how that walk ended up with him at The Art Institute of Chicago of all places…
There’s a girl who doesn’t have a whole lot of prospects, but the sun’s coming up anyway, and she’s got another chance at it. I think that gave me some sort of feeling that I too am a person, and get another chance every day the sun comes up.”
And, the painting.
“Jules Breton’s ‘Song of the Lark’ was deemed the most popular painting in America in a poll conducted in 1934. In this evocative work, a young peasant woman stands silently in the flat fields of the artist’s native Normandy as the sun rises, listening to the song of a distant lark. The painting was Eleanor Roosevelt’s favorite work of art; it also inspired Bill Murray while he was struggling as an actor in Chicago.”
Keep truckin’…
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Available 24 hours: 800-273-8255
