Do we like Dan Aykroyd?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He has backed LGBTQ+ causes and defended a women-led reboot, and no harmful campaigning turned up, though the record is thin in places.
Aykroyd was born in Ottawa in 1952 and grew up in Ottawa and Hull. His dad was a civil engineer who advised Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. He started acting lessons at 12, left uni to chase comedy in Toronto, and landed a CBC gig at 19.
From there it was Second City, where he met John Belushi, then Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1979 and a writing Emmy in 1977. He co-wrote and starred in The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters, and got an Oscar nomination for Driving Miss Daisy. Off screen he co-founded House of Blues and later Crystal Head Vodka.
The harm check comes up clean. The one old stain he has raised himself is the blackface scene in Trading Places: in 2023 he said he probably couldn't get away with it now and wouldn't choose such a part. That's owning it, not dodging it, and nothing else like it turned up.
On LGBTQ+ stuff he looks like an ally rather than a problem. Crystal Head Vodka, which he co-founded, put out a rainbow Pride bottle in 2021 with a portion of each sale going to Kaleidoscope Trust, a group defending LGBT+ rights across the Commonwealth. In 2023 he also argued that only gay actors playing gay roles is an invalid argument, which some will cheer and others will argue with.
On women, he stuck by the 2016 all-female Ghostbusters. In 2024 he said he liked the movie Paul Feig made with those spectacular women. His beef with it was money: he said that as a producer he failed to push back on spending.
In 2016 Leslie Jones copped heavy online abuse over that film, and Aykroyd hit out at her attackers in an interview. Fox reported he called them losers and suggested they'd back the Republican ticket. It's a bit sweeping and not exactly diplomatic, but he was defending her, and it's a stoush, not a harm pattern.