Bill Murray Career Timeline

The first of hopefully many BMB exclusives! For my other blog, I have done career timelines for Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, and Tom Hanks. What better actor to do next than Bill Murray? I couldn't think of anyone better, either. Click the image below for full size, read commentary after the jump, and enjoy!

While compiling the data needed for the Bill Murray career timeline, several things were notable. Like my other timelines, this one was incomplete. IMDB as usual had a complete data set and Rotten Tomatoes was missing a few films, but I was really surprised at the number of films missing from Metacritic. How do you not have Caddyshack, Stripes, and Ghostbusters on your site? They were even missing some post 2000 movies, which is unusual. Regardless, most of Bill's flicks have 3 data points, and all have at least 2 except for 1984's Nothing Lasts Forever and 2001's Speaking of Sex.

In all, there are 40 films represented in the timeline. I chose not to include EVERY movie Murray has appeared in, as he had several small/cameo appearances over the years (Little Shop of Horrors, Zombieland, etc) and very minor roles in some earlier films. Obviously all his starring roles are represented here, and most of his other films where he at least had a meaningful role.

According to both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, Bill Murray's worst film is 2010's Passion Play. Metacritic thinks Garfield is worse. His best film? Unanimously it's 1993's Groundhog Day. I was surprised at just how lackluster Murray's career has been over the years, but yet he is still very highly respected as an actor. You would think a man who chooses his roles wisely would have more peaks than valleys, but maybe he is too picky. It's safe to say he should just act in all of Wes Anderson's movies; those films averaged 7.55/7.9/7.63, well above average.