He was one of the most promising talents in comedy: what did he really have arrived at John Belushi, hero of Blues Brothers?

It was a star, but a shooting star. Today fairly forgotten because he had only seven years of career on the screen, John Belushi was however one of the most promising comics of his generation, but his demons will have cost him his life at only 33 years. What exactly has happened to this actor that everyone promised a big future?

A TV star, but at what price?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttsalvp_xna

He could have had the popularity of a Will Ferrell, an Adam Sandler, a Chevy Chase or a Bill Murray, but John Belushi is little known today, except for Blues Brothers and 1941 by Steven Spielberg. Humorist above all, Belushi became known thanks to the program Saturday Night Live in which he appeared during the first 4 seasons, from 1975 to 1979.

From Christmas 1976, as evidenced by Candice Bergen who came to turn for the third time in the show, and cited in Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushidrugs, and particularly cocaine, circulates behind the scenes of the show, attenuating the talents yet present on writing and on the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idla03u8ojc

Belushi is already at the time, one of the most excessive in this area, consuming cocaine daily, marijuana 4 to 5 days a week and mescaline regularly, taking drugs to sleep, acids and amphetamines. His doctor asks him to brake, otherwise he will put his health in danger. Belushi response: “I give so much pleasure to so many people, why could I not get a little fun myself? Why should I stop?”

Belushi, excess erected in lifestyle

Universal

The SNL allows Belushi to start appearing in the cinema, first in the western en route to the south (a flop directed by Jack Nicholson), but especially American College (1977), in which he is very appreciated in his role of character out of control and almost without dialogue nicknamed Bluto.

After 1941, a war comedy that brought a lot the audience directed by the Grand Steven Spielberg (1979), Belushi turns with his best friend Dan Aykroyd the musical The Blues Brothers (1980), directed by John Landis. Bringing together his love of rock and his “destroy” side, Belushi loves to make the film, but on the set, the dealers are everywhere, and the drug circulates. The actor, in full descent, will even come according to the work Wired Hitting John Landis who had just thrown his cam reserve in the toilet, a gesture that the director denies.

Universal

Belushi sink more and more into frantic consumption and finally adds heroin to the list of substances he uses. His addictions keep him away from the sets, because he is said to be uncontrollable, capable of disappearing overnight in the middle of filming without giving a single address. After the romantic comedy, two funny birds of Michael Apted whom he turns with Blair Brown and the neighbors, a black comedy in which he found Dan Aykroyd, he really plunged in early 1982 and could no longer get out of his state.

His self -destructive behavior is fatal since he dies of an injection of “speedball” (mixture of heroin and cocaine) during a party given to Château Marmont in Los Angeles. He was 33 years old.