Rick Moranis

Rick Moranis is a Canadian actor, comedian, and writer whose four-decade career has produced multiple defining 1980s and 1990s American comedy films — particularly his 1989 lead role as Wayne Szalinski in Joe Johnston's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Disney film franchise. He was born Frederick Allan Moranis on April 18, 1953, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, into a Jewish-Canadian working-class family. His father Maurice Moranis was a Toronto-area accountant, and his mother Leslie Moranis was a homemaker.

His teenage and early-adulthood career across 1971–1976 — across multiple Toronto-area radio-broadcasting positions, particularly his 1975 work as the morning-drive DJ at Toronto-area CFTR-AM radio station — produced his early-career Canadian broadcasting public profile.

His 1980 hiring as a cast member of the Toronto SCTV (Second City TV) sketch-comedy TV series — alongside Dave Thomas, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, and Joe Flaherty — launched his early-1980s North American sketch-comedy public profile. His SCTV recurring sketch "The Great White North" (with Dave Thomas, in which they played the Bob and Doug McKenzie Canadian-stereotype hoser brothers) — produced their 1981 commercial album Bob and Doug McKenzie: The Great White North (which sold over 250,000 American copies) and the subsequent 1983 feature film Strange Brew (which Moranis co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in).

His subsequent late-1980s and 1990s American film career has produced multiple defining American films — particularly Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters (1984, in which he played Louis Tully), Mel Brooks's Spaceballs (1987, in which he played Lord Helmet), Joe Johnston's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and the 1992 sequel Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and the 1997 sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors (1986, alongside Steve Martin).

The February 4, 1991 sudden death of his wife Ann Belsky from breast cancer (when their two children were six and four) shaped his later biographical narrative — across which he withdrew from feature-film acting in the late-1990s to raise his children as a single father. He has continued to do voice-acting work across the 2000s and 2010s, although he declined to reprise his Honey, I Shrunk the Kids role across the planned but ultimately abandoned 2020 sequel.

His name Rick is the English short form of Frederick or Richard. Rick was a popular American boys' name across the mid-to-late 20th century.