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from a canadian content page:

Rick Moranis is a Canadian comic actor best known for his work on SCTV (featuring John Candy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'hara) and in films such as Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and My Blue Heaven.

Moranis was born Frederick Alan Moranis in Toronto, Ontario. In the 1970s, he worked (using the stage name Rick Allen) as a disc jockey at various radio stations in Toronto, including CFTR, CKFH, and CHUM-FM. He followed that with his work at SCTV, enjoying particular success portraying "Bob" of Bob and Doug McKenzie.

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from infoplease

Born: 4/18/1954
Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario
Moranis's comic talent suits a variety of roles; he is particularly known for portrayals of the wacky eccentric and the definitive nerd. A veteran of Canada's Second City comedy troupe, he gained fame in the United States as the loopy accountant in Ghostbusters (1984). He played a memorable Barney Rubble in the movie The Flintstones (1994), and his other film credits include frequent appearances with Steve Martin, such as Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Parenthood (1989), and My Blue Heaven (1990). He also starred in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1989–1997) series of films, and in Spaceballs (1987).

little giants trailer


wikipedia's two cents:

Early life
Moranis was born in Toronto, Ontario, and went to high school at the Sir Sandford Fleming Secondary School

SCTV
Main article: Second City Television
He followed that with his work at SCTV, enjoying particular success portraying "Bob" of Bob and Doug McKenzie. Doug was played by Canadian actor Dave Thomas.
His other memorable SCTV characterizations include motor-mouthed film producer Larry Siegel, terminally-ill rock star Clay Collins, smooth-voiced video deejay Gerry Todd, cool Leutonian pop star Linsk Minyk, kid-brother amateur comic Skip Bittman, head cheese butcher Carl Scutz, and morning homily intellect Rabbi Karlov.

Feature films
The handprints of Rick Moranis in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.
After his SCTV work, Moranis had a busy film career that lasted over a decade. In an August 2004 interview with Sound & Vision magazine, Moranis talked about the kinds of films he enjoyed the most:
“On the last couple of movies I made — big-budget Hollywood movies — I really missed being able to create my own material. In the early movies I did, I was brought in to basically rewrite my stuff, whether it was Ghostbusters or Spaceballs. By the time I got to the point where I was "starring" in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn’t for me. I’m really not an actor. I’m a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody’s precious words work.”

Recent activities
As of 2004, Moranis was on the Advisory Committee for the comedy program at Humber College.
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[1] 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 [2] though other reports said that he was tired of typecasting.
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.
In November 2007, Moranis reunited with Dave Thomas for a 24th anniversary special of Bob and Doug McKenzie, titled Bob and Doug McKenzie's 2-4 Anniversary. The duo shot new footage for this special. Thomas subsequently created a new animated Bob and Doug McKenzie series, Bob & Doug, for his company Animax Entertainment. Moranis declined to voice the role of Bob, which was taken over by Dave Coulier, but remains involved in the series as an executive producer.[3]
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.[4]
In April of 2009, Entertainment Weekly's website quoted Harold Ramis as saying that Moranis was indeed on board for the third Ghostbusters movie that Sony Pictures was developing.[5]

Rick Moranis song


from imdb:

Trivia
Was widowed in the early 1990s when his wife died of cancer. He has two children from that marriage.
Moranis and Dave Thomas originally created the characters Bob and Doug McKenzie in protest against government requirements for "identifiable Canadian content" in domestically produced television programming. The skits, as an SCTV program "The Great White North" featured two dim witted brothers who combined as many negative Canadian stereotypes as possible. Despite this, they became so popular that the skits were included in the U.S. version of the program, and Moranis and Thomas were made members of the Order of Canada for their contribution to Canadian culture.
Was the afternoon deejay on Toronto radio station CHUM-FM in the Seventies.
Using the on-air name of "Rick Allen" he was the overnight deejay on Toronto radio station CFTR-AM in the early Seventies after that station switched formats from Beautiful Music to Top 40.
Along with Dave Thomas, scored a Billboard Top 40 hit in 1982 called "Take Off" as Bob and Doug MacKenzie in a duet with Rush lead singer Geddy Lee.
Went to school with Geddy Lee from Rush.
He made the cover of the first issue of Disney Adventures in 1990.
Was invited to the party Steve Martin was throwing that turned out to be his wedding.
Attended the funeral of his good friend John Candy.
Was considered for the role of Governor Lewis in Evolution (2001).

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