Jim Downey (comedian)

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Jim Downey (sometimes credited as James Downey) is probably best known for his time as a writer for Saturday Night Live. With 23 seasons under his belt, he has one of the longest tenures in the show's history. His first stretch as writer for the show ran from 1976 to 1980, culminating in a brief stint as a featured cast member. By the 1979-1980 season, Lorne Michaels had lost both Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi to feature film careers, causing him to look to writers like Downey, Peter Aykroyd, Al Franken and Tom Davis to fill spots as cast members. When Michaels left the show in 1980, so did Downey, along with practically everyone else.

After leaving SNL, Downey went on to become head writer of Late Night with David Letterman for a little over a year during its formative stages. He returned to SNL in 1984 and several years later, when Norm Macdonald began as Weekend Update anchor, wrote exclusively for that segment of the show. Downey and Macdonald subsequently became something of a team, working virtually in a vacuum from the rest of the cast and crew. So, when Macdonald was fired from the show in 1998, Downey went with him, only to return yet again in 2000. He continued to write for the show until 2005 when he left yet again to write a novel.

In 1995 he appeared in the film Billy Madison in the role of the high school principal who acts as referees the quiz contest at the end of the movie.

Although he was only a credited actor on Saturday Night Live for one season, Jim Downey has appeared in over 40 sketches from 1977 to 2005, his most notable being parody commercials such as "Craig's Travellers Checks," "First Citiwide Change Bank," and "Grayson Moorhead Securities."