Chevy Chase's turbulent life and career are profiled in the CNN documentary I'm Chevy Chase And You're Not. The comedian became the breakout star on the first-ever season of Saturday Night Live in 1975 - later becoming the first major cast member to leave the comedy institution the following year. (George Coe was technically the first SNL cast member to leave. He was billed as a "Not Ready for Prime Time Player" in SNL's October 1975 premiere but was quickly phased out of the show.) Chase became one of the most bankable movie stars of the 1980s until he struggled with personal problems, substance abuse and a series of questionable career decisions. "Fame is a very unnatural human condition," he confessed in the book Saturday Night. "When you stop to realize that Abraham Lincoln was probably never seen by more than 400 people in a single evening, and that I can enter over 40 million homes in a single evening due to the power of television, you have to admit the situation is not normal." Chevy Chase's Family Recalls His Struggles With Cocaine and Alcohol Abuse Keep scrolling for some of Chase's career ups and downs throughout the years. Chevy Chase Was an Original 'Saturday Night Live' Cast Member Chevy Chase met future Saturday Night Live costars John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner when they all worked on the influential National Lampoon Radio Hour in the mid-1970s. Around the same time, Canadian comedian and producer Lorne Michaels started putting together a new late-night show for NBC to replace Tonight Show reruns on Saturday nights. Michaels wanted Chase for the first season of NBC's Saturday Night - later to be retitled Saturday Night Live - but not as a member of the cast. "When he first offered me the job it was to be a writer. Not acting," Chase told The New York Times in 2013. "I asked, 'Can I act?' He said no. So I turned it down." Chase eventually changed his mind after a disastrous experience working on a play in California and agreed to take the writing job on Saturday Night. However, Michaels soon realized that Chase could be a breakout star and allowed him into the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" ensemble ahead of the show premiering. "I didn't think it would last more than a year," Chase said in 2013. "I'm not even sure Lorne did. We were going to get our licks in while we could." Chevy Chase Didn't Always Get Along With His 'Saturday Night Live' Costars The cast of Saturday Night Live were riding high off the popularity of their first season in 1976. Chevy Chase was positioned as the central star of SNL, often delivering the "Live from New York" opening line and anchoring "Weekend Update." Chase was all too aware that his success could breed jealousy from some of the other "Not Ready for Prime Time Players." "I found out that John [Belushi], who I'd known for years, had been quite jealous about my rise to fame, and maybe for good reason," Chase said on The Howard Stern Show in 2008. "The fact is that John was brilliant and by any real standard, he should have been the big star." He went on. "There are things that happen. My name is said every week. Nobody can spell his name!" Chevy Chase on "Saturday Night Live" season 1. Courtesy NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection Belushi wasn't the only SNL star to have an issue with Chase. Jane Curtin said in 2018 that she never considered Chase a friend. "I only worked with Chevy for eight months, so I don't know Chevy," Curtin told Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen at the time. "I know that he behaves badly and I don't know what's behind it. I don't think it's healthy." Chase didn't have prickly relationships with all of his SNL costars. Garrett Morris told GQ in 2025 that Chase was one of the few writers at SNL to cast him in sketches early on. "Chevy Chase wrote for me," Morris recalled. "A couple of people stepped up and started writing for me. But it would not be true to say there was no racism among some of the writers. There was." Chevy Chase Was the First Major 'Saturday Night Live' Cast Member to Quit the Show Chevy Chase left Saturday Night Live in the middle of its second season in 1976. He later admitted that his sole reason for quitting was to save his relationship with then-girlfriend Jacqueline Carlin. "Look, I would have stayed. There was this girl I wanted to marry who ended up throwing a candelabra at me," he remembered in the 2002 book Live From New York. "Lorne knew she was wrong for me, but I thought I was in love. I also felt after one year that we should all leave, that we should all take off at least one year and think this over, because otherwise it was going to become solipsistic - jokes about ourselves, showcases for characters as opposed to what it should be, which is a vehicle to take apart television." He conceded, "I'm still hurting, I still grieve for all those years that I could have had there. And you know, if Lorne had put his arms around me and given me a hug and asked me to stay, then I probably would h