Dan Aykroyd Almost Ended Up as a Prison Guard — How His Parents Changed His Path

Fans can actually thank Dan Aykroyd’s parents The Blues Brothers and Ghost busters.

He recently spoke with PEOPLE about his new project, Audible Original The Blues Brothers: The Bow of GratitudeAykroyd reflected on his childhood in Canada and how a series of small choices led him to where he is now.

“My first passion was simply surviving in Ottawa in a government city as the son of an upper-middle-class bureaucrat,” the 72-year-old said. “I started working unloading cars for the Canadian National Railway at the age of 14 and haven’t stopped working since.”

Although his original goal was to “get paid, borrow a friend’s car and put gas in it, take the lady on a date”, his creative side was awakened when his parents put him in improvisation classes at the age of 12.

“Every weekend there was a class right down the street from where I lived, in the basement of a theater in Ottawa,” he recalled. “At the age of 12, I studied what I ended up doing professionally – although at the time I didn’t think I would ever take it up as a profession.”

Dan Aykroyd says he will never forget the ‘trauma’ of having to tell John Belushi’s wife he had died

Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin on ‘SNL’ in 1978.

NBC Television/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Aykroyd later went to Canada’s Carleton University, where he studied criminology. He also continued to drive the postal truck. But friend Valerie Bromfield – who eventually became a close colleague for a time – helped push him towards a career in comedy.

“She said, ‘You’re not going to be a prison guard. We’re going to write comedy and you’re going to do comedy.’ ”

The couple had a show on cable television, where they could show the future SNL creator Lorne Michaels, who gave them other television work and kept Aykroyd on his radar.

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“Then I pursued my career at Second City with Valri, and it was actually her coaxing and pushing that got me out of Ottawa,” Aykroyd explained. “I would have worked as a prison officer for 20 years if I had my friends. I would have just retired.”

Of course, it wasn’t like that. In 1975, Aykroyd became one of the first stars SNL along with legends including Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi and Laraine Newman. That move ended up helping The Blues Brothers the film hit the big screen in 1980, before Aykroyd left Ghost busters, his Oscar nominee appeared Driving Miss Daisy and My girlfriend, among other classics.

Cast members of ‘SNL’ from 1975.

NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

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“It was Valeri,” he claimed. “I have her to thank for taking me out of Ottawa. I had a wonderful run.”

Akyroyd’s Audible Original is an oral history of Fr The Blues Brothers, the film that undoubtedly put him on the map and opened the door for more acting and screenwriting. Revisiting the project with colleagues and collaborators — including an interview with the late Belushi that he had never heard before — was extra special, he told PEOPLE.

“I hope people take away the emotion of the love story between John and me,” he said. “But also laughter and knowledge, and inspiration that you can still continue to do something you love.”

For more with Aykroyd, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.

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Source: HIS Education