Aykroyd was a writer and an original member of the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" cast on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from its inception in 1975 until his departure in 1979.

Aykroyd has done supporting roles in comedy films such as Tommy Boy (1995), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Loser (2000), Evolution (2001), 50 First Dates (2004), I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007), and Tammy (2014).

[1] His father, Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd (1922–2020), a civil engineer, worked as a policy adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,[2] and his mother, Lorraine Hélène Marie (née Gougeon; 1918–2018), was a secretary.

[7] His paternal ancestor was Englishman Samuel Aykroyd from Halifax, Yorkshire, who emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Upper Canada near Kingston, Ontario in 1810.

He attended St. Pius X and St. Patrick's High Schools, and studied criminology and sociology at Carleton University, but dropped out before completing his degree.

Had I lived in a different town I don't think that this would have happened, because it was just the confluence of educated government workers, and then also all the colleges in the area, Ottawa University, Carleton, and all the schools—these people were interested in blues culture.

[14] He was known for his impersonations of celebrities such as Jimmy Carter, Vincent Price, Richard Nixon, Rod Serling, Tom Snyder, and Julia Child.

He was also known for his recurring roles, such as Beldar, father of the Coneheads family; with Steve Martin, Yortuk Festrunk, one of the "Two Wild and Crazy Guys" brothers from Bratislava, Slovakia; sleazy late-night cable TV host E. Buzz Miller and his cousin, corrupt maker of children's toys and costumes Irwin Mainway (who extolled the virtues and defended the safety of the "Bag-o-Glass" toy); Fred Garvin, a male prostitute; and high-bred but low-brow critic Leonard Pinth-Garnell.

[15] Aykroyd's eccentric talent was recognized by others in the highly competitive SNL environment; when he first presented his "Super Bass-O-Matic '76" sketch, a fake TV commercial in which a garish, hyper-pitchman (based on Ron Popeil) touts a food blender that turns an entire bass into liquid pulp, the other writers and cast members considered the sketch "so exhilaratingly strange that many remember sitting and listening, open-mouthed... Nobody felt jealous of it because they couldn't imagine writing anything remotely like it.

"[16] Aykroyd later said that the inspiration for the sketch was seeing his aunt Helene Gougeon (a culinary writer and food columnist in Montreal) put a bass into a blender in order to make a bouillabaisse when he was 12 years old.

In Rolling Stone's February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Aykroyd was ranked fifth (behind Belushi, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, and Mike Myers).

"[20] In later decades, Aykroyd made occasional guest appearances and unannounced cameos on SNL, often impersonating the American politician Bob Dole.

[22] During some guest appearances, he resurrected the Blues Brothers musical act with frequent host John Goodman in place of Belushi, who was by then deceased.

On March 24, 2007, Aykroyd appeared as a crying fan of American Idol finalist Sanjaya Malakar (played by Andy Samberg) during "Weekend Update".

[citation needed] Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles was a regular haunt for the original Blues Brothers in the early days of the band.

Belushi and Aykroyd became fixtures at the recording studio, while Blues Brothers band member Steve Cropper called Cherokee his producing home.

During this time, Cropper, along with producing partner and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb, worked on a number of music projects with the two comedians/musicians, including Belushi's favourite band, Fear, and later Aykroyd's movie Dragnet.

[26] Concurrent with his work in Saturday Night Live, Aykroyd played the role of Purvis Bickle, lift operator at the fictitious office block 99 Sumach Street in the CBC Television series Coming Up Rosie.

One of his best-received performances was as a blueblood-turned-wretch in the 1983 comedy Trading Places, in which he co-starred with fellow SNL alumnus Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis.

[citation needed] In the early 1980s, Aykroyd began work on a script for the film that eventually became Ghostbusters, inspired by his fascination with parapsychology and his belief in ghosts.

Aykroyd appeared in four other films released in 1988 (The Couch Trip, She's Having a Baby, Caddyshack II, and My Stepmother Is an Alien), all of them critical and commercial failures.

Most of Aykroyd's other films in the 1990s were similarly poorly received, including Chaplin (1992), Coneheads (1993, also based on a SNL skit), North (1994), Exit to Eden (1994), Canadian Bacon (1995), Getting Away with Murder (1996), and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998).

Most of his subsequent film roles have tended to be small character parts in big-budget productions, such as a father in Loser (2000), a signals analyst in Pearl Harbor (2001), a neurologist in 50 First Dates (2004), an annoying neighbor in Christmas with the Kranks (2004), and a fire captain in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (2007).

[citation needed] In 2009, Aykroyd and Ramis wrote and appeared in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which also featured Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, William Atherton, and Brian Doyle-Murray.

[48] The couple met on the set of Doctor Detroit released the same year and appeared together in four additional films: Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Spies Like Us (1985), The Couch Trip (1988), and Exit to Eden (1994).

Walsh, who had played Bob Woodward in Wired, was replaced as Grimmer by fellow Canadian actor Paul Koslo,[63] causing the film a $125,000 production delay.

Along these lines, he served, from 1996 to 2000, as host of Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, which claimed to describe cases drawn from the archives of "The Office of Scientific Investigation and Research".

Following the awards, Joe Nickell wrote to Aykroyd asking for the research behind the "cases" presented on Psi Factor, particularly a claim that NASA scientists were "killed while investigating a meteor crash and giant eggs were found and incubated, yielding a flea the size of a hog".

[67] In 1977, Aykroyd received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series for his collaborative work on Saturday Night Live.

[77] In 2017, he was made a member of the Order of Ontario in recognition for being "one of the world's most popular entertainers, well-known for his time on Saturday Night Live and the 1984 classic movie Ghostbusters.