Dan Aykroyd would have spent his life working as a jail clerk if a friend hadn't talked him into pursuing comedy and acting

Canadian Dan told People: "My first passion was really just surviving in Ottawa in the government town as an upper middle class son of bureaucrats.

"I started work on the Canadian National Railway unloading boxcars at 14 and I have not stopped working since."

He added he was desperate to "get a pay cheque, borrow a friend's car and put gas in it, take a lady on a date".

But his creative side was fuelled when his parents put him in improvisation classes when he was aged 12, with Dan adding: "Every weekend there was a class right down the street from where I lived, in the basement of the Ottawa Theatre.

"At 12 years old, I was studying what I eventually went on to doing professionally - though then I didn't think I'd ever take it up as a profession."

Dan went to college at Canada's Carleton University, where he studied criminology and took a job driving a mail truck.

But it wasn't until his friend Valri Bromfield told him to give up the 9 to 5 grind that he went into acting.

He added: "She said, 'You're not going to be a prison guard. We're going to write comedy and you're going into comedy'."

The pair had a cable TV show, which they showed future 'Saturday Night Live' creator Lorne Michaels, now 79, who gave them TV work and kept Dan in mind as a potential top talent.

Dan said: "Then I went on to a career at Second City with Valri, and it was really her urging and nudging that got me out of Ottawa.

"I would've worked as a clerk in the penitentiary service for 20 years if I'd had my druthers (preference.) I'd just be retiring.

"It was Valeri. I've got to thank her for taking me out of Ottawa. I've had a beautiful run."