I’ve been a big fan of Dan Aykroyd for many years. I knew that he wrote Coneheads and Ghostbusters. I didn’t think that he really believed UFOs and ghosts for real, though!! I saw a recent video of him on Jimmy Kimmel where he said that he had scientific evidence that UFOs exist. It saddens me that he might become the spokesperson for UFOs and the paranormal. :(
I’ve got to the point that I don’t really want to know about many artists ( of any art form ) private beliefs. I can name a hundred artists with what are to me totally whacked-out views but since they are not in my personal orbit it matters not. So continue to enjoy someone’s performance or art and nevermind what views they hold ( unless those views are put forward to incite to hatred ).
It can be surprising. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a very intelligent man and a clear thinker, got into “spiritualism” in his later years. It involved paying people to speak to spirits. He even accused Harry Houdini of having supernatural powers and not knowing it after Houdini demonstrated some of his tricks.
Yes ! Exactly ! Dan Aykroyd usually played the really smart guy in most of his roles. You can fake being stupid. It’s hard to fake being smart. That’s why this is so strange. I guess critical thinking is something that has to be learned independent of intelligence. Even smart people can have poor critical thinking.
I didn’t like that Jim Carrey was promoting anti-vax either. He was probably influenced by Jenny McCarthy whom he was dating. However, Jim Carrey didn’t make a career of playing smart guys.
The problem is that the writers may write an extremely intelligent part and the actor mouths the words very well so we can’t help but think that’s really the actor’s personality. I used to watch Johnny Carson and was often shocked at how different the intterviewee’s answers were from the parts I’d seen him/her play. Some came across and really rather dull, and others as surprisingly quick witted and deep thinking - often quite far from their screen personas.
The problem is that if a crackpot actor is mouthing the words of a really intelligent author, we think of the difficulty of faking being smart. However, what we are seeing is evidence of the author, not the actor being smart.
I think many times Dan Aykroyd WAS the author of the words he was mouthing. He was quite creative as a writer. Most of the time, though, actors ARE mouthing the words that someone else wrote.
Here’s his wiki entry. You might want to scroll straight to the bottom under “Personal Life” and “Beliefs”. I remember reading a book he wrote about the paranormal, but I can’t find a reference to it in this article.
Oh yeah ! I almost forgot about him ! He really got into that paranormal stuff, too. The guy who plays House hasn’t come out publicly and said that global warming is a hoax, yet, has he? That seems to be where this is heading.
I get the part that they are actors and you can’t believe that they have the same qualities in real life that their on-screen characters have. The part that boggles my mind is that I think that people like Nimoy and Aykroyd ARE smart people in real life. Maybe this is a right brain smart vs left brain smart issue or this is a raw intelligence vs learned critical thinking skills intelligence issue, but I find it fascinating that part of a person’s personality can be so smart while another part can be so stupid.
