John Adam Belushi was born on the 24th January 1949, in Chicago, Illinois USA, of Albanian descent. He was an actor and comedian, who came to fame as one of the original cast of the sketch show “Saturday Night Live” (1975) and later appeared in successful comedies including “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978) and “The Blues Brothers” (1980). He died on the 5th March 1982 in West Hollywood, California USA at the age of 33 from the effects of an accidental overdose. John Belushi was active in the entertainment industry from 1973 to 1982.
How rich was the actor? The authoritative sources have estimated that the total size of John Belushi’s net worth was as much as $2 million.
John Belushi Net Worth $2 Million
To begin with, John Belushi was the son of Agnes and Adam Belushi. He grew up in Wheaton and had a brother, Jim and a sister, Marian.
Concerning his professional career, Belushi debuted as a comic actor at the beginning of 1970s. In 1972, he had a role in the play “Lemmings”, a parody of Woodstock and a production of the humorous magazine National Lampoon. Then he worked on “The National Lampoon Radio Hour”, before in 1975 switching to the television program “Saturday Night Live”. Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and George Coe formed the cast of the first season of the sketch program. Belushi was one of the most popular comedians of the program and it helped him to get roles in comic films like “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978), “Goin’ South” (1978), “Old Boyfriends” (1979), and others. In 1979, Belushi played the lead role in Steven Spielberg’s “1941”; given the success of Spielberg’s previous two productions, “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, the comic war was initially considered a flop. A year later, Belushi appeared in the film “The Blues Brothers”, a musical comedy directed by John Landis, which grew into a cult film and is considered Belushi’s best work. In 1981, Belushi landed roles in “Neighbors” and “Continental Divide”, but neither of these was very successful.
During his acting career Belushi was known as a heavy drinker and drug user. Besides alcohol, Belushi also experimented with mescaline, LSD, amphetamines and especially cocaine. During the filming of “The Blues Brothers” a lot of shooting days were cancelled or were delayed because of Belushi’s behavior, thus Universal Pictures could not keep to the pre-budget. On the 5th March 1982, John Belushi was found dead in his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont hotel, from a speedball (a mixture of cocaine and heroin). The night before his death he had been visited by Robert De Niro and Robin Williams; when they left him, he was in the company of Cathy Smith, and two months later in an interview with the National Enquirer, Smith said that she had given him the fatal speedball. Smith was extradited from Canada and subsequently arrested for murder, which was afterwards reduced to manslaughter. Smith was jailed for 15 months.
Finally, in the personal life of the actor, he was married to his high school sweetheart Judy Jacklin from 1976 until his death.
