Chevy Chase

SNL's first genuine star, and he knew it. He anchored Weekend Update from the jump, deployed 'I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not' with enough smug confidence to make arrogance funny, and left early in his second season before the show had even figured out what it was. The 1980s belonged to him. Caddyshack, Fletch, three Vacation films. Clark Griswold became one of the defining comedy characters of the decade, a man so earnestly uncool he circled back to beloved.

His reputation for being impossible on set has outlasted his film career. He came close to a fistfight with Bill Murray backstage at SNL. He left Community after a feud with showrunner Dan Harmon that ended in a profanity-laced voicemail Harmon then leaked. He reportedly told Donald Glover that people found him funnier 'because you're Black.' He suffered near-fatal heart failure in 2021 and has spoken openly about memory loss since. Lorne Michaels excluded him from the SNL 50 special. Asked about his reputation, his answer was 'I don't give a crap.'

Before Caddyshack made him unavoidable, he played drums in a college band called the Leather Canary alongside Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who later formed Steely Dan. He got into Bard College after allegedly being expelled from Haverford for harboring a cow in his fourth-floor dorm room. His mother was a concert pianist; his maternal grandfather was an admiral who served at the Battle of Midway. He was his high school valedictorian. None of that backstory maps onto anything he became.