14. Martin Short
An SNL legend who is still enjoying zeitgeisty hits in his 70s, Martin Short might be higher on this list if not for the fact that his career was not made by SNL. Instead he made SNL buoyant during its still rocky early ‘80s period when the series seemed destined for cancellation. Before the fall of 1984, the show largely survived due to the dazzling talent of Eddie Murphy, but by Short’s season, Murphy was already well done with SNL, pretaping sketches in March so he could be off the show by April and May. So Ebersol’s solution was to make the following season an event by hiring some already pseudo-stars, including Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest fresh off This Is Spinal Tap, and Martin Short.
Short was a somewhat less known commodity to American viewers, but he’d for years been carving out a sketch comedy niche for those who knew where to look on SCTV, opposite John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, and Eugene Levy. He brought much of that same manic energy to SNL for a year, creating hit characters like Jiminy Glick and Ed Grimley. He then left after it was over to immediately star in his first Hollywood hit, The Three Amigos, a film which paired him opposite fellow SNL favorites Steve Martin and Chevy Chase. The former of which would become the source of one of the most important professional and personal friendships in Short’s life, with Short and Martin co-starring in the Father of the Bride movies and (eventually) Only Murders in the Building.
Short also has enjoyed a long film career with largely supporting work in ensemble pieces like Mars Attacks! and Innerspace. Although for those who’ve never seen the absolutely demented Clifford, in which Short took the starring role as the child from hell who chooses chaos (and he was 43 at the time of filming), we cannot recommend it enough.
13. Chris Rock
One of the now legendary “bad boys of SNL” who came up on the series in the early ‘90s, Chris Rock was good friends with fellow young gun hellraisers of that time, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade. However, as is again a familiar refrain for Black actors, Rock struggled with finding enough floorspace to create beloved characters and sketches during his three years on the show. Even so, the extraordinarily talented standup comic did not sweat a post-SNL career that saw him quickly selling out arenas while on comedy tour and appearing, ahem, on In Living Color before launching his own zeitgeisty sketch/standup hybrid series on HBO.
This soon transitioned to a respectable movie career that is still going. Early on Rock found himself dubiously starring opposite the likes of Mel Gibson and Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 4, where the actor was allowed to do standup routines about phone companies—other memorable early roles include New Jack City and Dogma—but soon Rock found himself leading his own comedies like Head of State, Death at a Funeral, I Think I Love My Wife, and Top Five, the latter two of which benefited from Rock also writing and directing toward his strengths as an actor, and away from his limitations.
12. Billy Crystal
Another actor who would be much higher if SNL had been his real start, Billy Crystal, like the aforementioned Martin Short, joined SNL as a recognizable talent in 1984 after starring on the sitcom Soap for four seasons. Although his casting on SNL as the new season’s biggest headliner must have been especially sweet since Crystal was supposed to be in the cast, the beloved Not Ready for Primetime Players, in 1975. He even had a sketch in the first episode which was cut for time at the last minute by Lorne Michaels. This painful incident caused Crystal’s manager to insist the young no-name talent walk out the studio minutes before airtime, fracturing Crystal’s relationship with Michaels for years to come.
