Mike Myers had a ridiculously charmed time starting his comedy career

Legend of comedy Mike Myers had an appropriately legendary launch to his entertainment career. “I’d just turned 19, and it was my last day of high school: my last exam was at 9am, I auditioned at 12, and by three o’clock I was a member of the Second City touring company,” he explains in a new interview with Metrograph. Sure, it was the junior company rather than the Mainstage, but he was nevertheless following in the footsteps of his heroes like Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd.

But when he wasn’t promoted to Mainstage, he decided to move to England instead—and got a lot of work as a double act with Neil Mullarkey. When he returned to Canada a few years later after his father got sick, Mainstage finally came calling. Eventually, “I moved to Chicago [Second City], did that for a year. I loved my time there. And then I got hired for Saturday Night Live in 1988, which was crazy and out of the blue,” he recalls. “Martin Short, the producer Pam Thomas, and Dave Foley all said to Lorne [Michaels, SNL creator and producer], ‘You should probably hire this guy,’ which was great. I didn’t audition—if I had auditioned, I don’t think I would have gotten in.”

It’s hard to imagine Myers would have flopped his SNL audition, but he clearly did have a charmed career path. And all this from a guy who thought he was going to be a documentary filmmaker. (“I thought I could create the Canadian New Wave, you know?”) But life had other plans, and he became Shrek instead. Now Myers is more focused on family: “That’s been the happiest time of my life, actually, prioritizing trying to get healthy and taking care of these kids. Still making stuff, but with the correct priority.” You can read the full interview for yourself here.