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Will Ferrell
« on: May 7th, 2002, 10:11am » |
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After seven years as a Saturday Night Live stalwart, the funnyguy famous for his dead-on impersonation of President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s mangled vocabulary has announced he's quitting his gig as a Not Ready for Prime-Time Player.
"Being on SNL has been a fulfillment of a dream. This show gave me opportunities that just wouldn't have been possible had I remained a bank teller in Irvine," says Ferrell. "The people I've come to know and work with have made my time here the best it could possibly be. I will truly miss them."
The 35-year-old Ferrell plans on following the well-worn path of other SNL alumni and trying his luck on the big screen.
Ferrell, a former member of L.A.'s famed comedy troupe the Groundlings, joined the cast of Saturday Night Live (news - Y! TV) in 1995 after being tapped by SNL founder and executive producer Lorne Michaels. He went on to create numerous characters for the show, including Craig, the Spartan Spirit cheerleader, and Marty Culp, the middle school music teacher who crooned horribly off-key covers of pop tunes.
But it was his signature impressions of Jeopardy!'s Alex Trebek, film buff James Lipton (of Bravo's Inside the Actor's Studio), Neil Diamond and a less than sharp George "Dubya" Bush that made him an SNL star and earned him Emmys last year for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program and for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program.
In his downtime from SNL, Ferrell has made a few forays on the big screen, most notably as the Moroccan hit man Mustafa in the Austin Powers franchise. He did a hilarious Bob Woodward in the Nixon spoof Dick and played the villainous fashion designer Mugatu in last year's Zoolander. Ferrell also starred in the sketch-to-screen clunker A Night at the Roxbury and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
In an interview Tuesday with the Los Angeles Times, Ferrell says he still needs to convince studio execs that he's more than a one-dimensional second banana. "I'm in that category of, 'Oh, he's funny,' " Ferrell says, not in the leading-man leagues.
He currently has three projects in the pipeline that he hopes will make him a star in the vein of such SNL vets as Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler and Mike Myers. (Classic episodes of Saturday Night Live can be seen Monday through Friday on E! at 7 p.m. ET/PT.)
First up is Old School, an Animal House-style comedy costarring Ferrell, Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn as three thirtysomething friends who, disillusioned with life, decide to relive the glory of their college days by founding their own fraternity next to a university. The Todd Phillips (Road Trip) flick is due out September 27.
Ferrell will then segue into Elf, a holiday comedy in which he stars as a human raised in Santa's workshop at the North Pole who finds out he isn't actually an elf. That starts shooting in the fall.
Finally, he will join forces with SNL scribe Adam McKay to write Ron Burgundy, in which Ferrell will star as a veteran local TV anchor forced to team up with a female coanchor.
Before he begins his star turns, Ferrell will next be seen on the big screen reprising his role as Mustafa in Austin Powers in Goldmember, which opens July 26.
Ferrell bows out of SNL on the May 18 season finale.
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