Frederick Alan "Rick" Moranis (born April 18, 1953) is a retired Canadian actor, comedian and musician, known for his comedy work on SCTV and appeared in several Hollywood films including Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Spaceballs, Parenthood and My Blue Heaven.

Recent activities

As of 2004, Moranis was on the Advisory Committee for the comedy program at Humber College, the only such diploma program in the world.

In an October 2005 interview in USA Today, Moranis talked about getting away from the movie business:
“ "I pulled out of making movies in about '96 or '97. I'm a single parent (Moranis' wife died in 1991 of liver cancer), and I just found that it was too difficult to manage raising my kids and doing the traveling involved in making movies. So I took a little bit of a break. And the little bit of a break turned into a longer break, and then I found that I really didn't miss it." ”

Moranis reportedly retired because he made so much money from the Honey I Shrunk the Kids movies that he did not need to work anymore.

In 2005, Moranis released an album entitled The Agoraphobic Cowboy, featuring country songs with lyrics which Moranis says follow in the comic tradition of songwriters/singers such as Roger Miller and Jim Stafford. The album was produced by Tony Scherr, and is distributed through ArtistShare, as well as Moranis' official Web site. In the Sound & Vision interview done before he decided to release the album, he commented on the origins of some of the songs:
“ About a year ago (in 2003), out of the blue, I just wrote a bunch of songs. For lack of a better explanation, they’re more country than anything. And I actually demoed four or five of them, and I’m not sure at this point what I’m going to do with them—whether I’m going to fold them into a full-length video or a movie. But, boy, I had a good time doing that. ”

On December 8, 2005, The Agoraphobic Cowboy was announced as a nominee for the 2006 Grammy for Best Comedy Album. (A previous album by Moranis was entitled You, Me, The Music, and Me (1989). On February 3, 2006, Moranis performed Press Pound on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and discussed the development of his music career.

On June 24, 2008, Moranis declined to come out of retirement to join the other cast members of Ghostbusters in the production of a new video game based on the films.