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Trivia Height - 6' 4" Prefers to do family oriented movies and has turned down roles in several films including the lead in American Beauty (1999) His now-famous "Good evening, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not" opening line on the "Weekend Update" segments of "Saturday Night Live" (1975) was a takeoff of New York news anchor Roger Grimsby's "Here now the news" opening line. Sat in with the college band The Leather Canary a couple of times. The band also included Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, later of Steely Dan fame. Winner of Harvard Lampoon Lifetime Achievement Award 1996 He appeared in the music video and sang in the choir on the song "Voices That Care." (1995) Convicted of drunk driving. His short-lived TV talk show was billed as a Cornelius Production, Cornelius being Chevy's real first name. Was nearly killed (electrocuted) during the filming of "Modern Problems" (1981) when, during the sequence in which he is wearing "landing lights" as he dreams that he is an airplane, the current in the lights short-circuited through his arm, back, and neck muscles. The near-death experience caused him to experience a period of deep depression. Attended Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Was valedictorian of his high school class Has perfect pitch, a musical ability to remember the exact frequency of a note.   Personal quotes (Commenting on his reaction upon hearing of the death of SNL co-star John Belushi): "I was so angry I didn't cry for five years."   Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia: "Good evening, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not." With those words, a star was born in 1975. Originally hired by "Saturday Night Live" as a writer, he ended up on camera in the weekly news segment, "Weekend Update," and became the show's first breakout star, winning Emmy awards for his acting and writing. After a season and a half, he heeded the siren call of Hollywood and after nearly two years, starred opposite Goldie Hawn in 1978's Foul Play. (He'd already appeared on theater screens in 1974's skitcomedy patchwork The Groove Tube and 1976's Tunnelvision but without achieving any recognition.) Foul Play's success led to Caddyshack (1980), another hit, but then came an extraordinary run of turkeys: Oh, Heavenly Dog!, Seems Like Old Times (both 1980), Modern Problems, Under the Rainbow (both 1981), and Deal of the Century (1983). Chase's breezy comic style and expressive face, it developed, might save a poorly written TV skit, but not a full-length feature. Ironically, for someone who rose to fame as a smart-ass, it was as a bumbling middle-class father that he scored his biggest movie hit: National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), which so far has spawned two vacation sequels: European (1985) and Christmas (1989). Next came Fletch (1985), generally considered his best film to date, in which his wisecracking persona perfectly defined Gregory MacDonald's reporter-cum-detective; it too led to a sequel, Fletch Lives (1989). But so many of his subsequent films, often teaming him with other SNL alumni, have been less than hilarious-Spies Like Us (1985), ¡Three Amigos! (1986), Caddyshack II, Funny Farm (both 1988), Nothing but Trouble (1991), and Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1991)-it's baffling that someone who began as such a brilliantly funny writer could be such a poor judge of scripts. In 1993 he launched a (disastrous) nightly TV talk show, made a cameo appearance in Last Action Hero and then starred in Cops and Robbersons (1994). Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.