In Runet you can find a quote characterizing the attitude of the American actor towards pets. We have verified the correctness of this attribution.
A quote signed by a Hollywood actor is distributed through publications on magazine websites (Esquire Kazakhstan, "Rules of life"), on educational resources ("Peekaboo"), V online collections aphorisms and social networks (Facebook, X, "LiveJournal").
There is a slightly different version of the statement: “I often don’t trust people who don’t like dogs, but I always trust a dog if it doesn’t like a person.”
Four-legged friends surround Bill Murray both in real life and in the movies. “I had very emotional moments with my dogs,” he said in interview V 2018. “My current dog was attacked by coyotes and left for dead. He survived and was the one I chose from his mother's litter. I considered him the smartest, and so it turned out; he is also the best companion, a very good companion and easy to communicate with.” The dog in question was Timber, a cross between a terrier and a Jack Russell terrier. That same year on National Puppy Camera Day filmed Murray with a tiny dog named Buttercup, rescued from a dog meat farm in South Korea.
IN interview 2025 Murray admitted that he had recently lost his dog. “I just couldn't replace him. He was the most extraordinary creature. But I am surrounded by people who are crazy about dogs and who have a lot of them. And friends leave their dogs with me, which is probably unsafe. So there are a lot of dogs around me that I am not personally responsible for, but I feed them, clothe them and give them a roof over their heads,” he said.
On screen, Murray's characters regularly deal with dogs. This is largely due to the work of Wes Anderson, a director who almost doesn't cost both without these pets and without your favorite comedian. In the film "The Life Aquatic by Steve Zissou"(2004) the American hero picks up a three-legged dog named Cody abandoned by pirates. In the film "Moonrise Kingdom"(2012) with his participation, one of the characters accidentally kills the wire-haired fox terrier Snoopy. In the animated film "Isle of Dogs"(2018) by the same director, Murray voiced an Akita Inu named Boss. In 2025, the drama by Scott McGehee and David Siegel was released.Faithful friend", in which the actor played a writer raising a Great Dane, Apollo. Hinting at the not always positive fate of pets in his previous films, the actor humorously remarked in one of interview: “Tell everyone that the dog [here] will live.”
However, Verified found no evidence that Bill Murray has ever uttered the line about trusting people and dogs in real life or on screen. Despite her popularity in the English-speaking world, the statement was not found in any interview with the actor, nor in relatively authoritative books, talking about Murray.
As the study shows social networks, these words began to be attributed to the actor at the end of 2014, and one of the earliest such publications links to the @BiIIMurray Twitter page (the two capital I's in the username imitate the lowercase L's). At the time of publication of the analysis, this user was blocked for violating the platform rules. However, fact checkers from Snopes, who studied the origin of the quote in 2016, managed to take several screenshots. As it turned out, in November 2014, the quote in question was actually published on this page.
As for the account itself, then various fact checkers We have repeatedly analyzed quotes in which he became the source of attribution. Experts noticed that the page description said: “I’m not Bill Murray. This is a parody account. This account is in no way associated with actor Bill Murray." However, not all ordinary users are as attentive, which, apparently, ultimately became the reason for blocking an account with half a million subscribers - misinformation continued to spread. The real Bill Murray does not have a page on X (the only profile of him that is considered official is on Instagram).
However, it was not the author of the parody account who came up with the quote about trust in people and dogs - it was popular and until the landmark publication. The first part of the aphorism is quite well known for a long time. The oldest found “Verified” publication of the full quotation appeared October 24, 2011 in X on the blog of user @Angrea. That tweet received more than 1,000 shares and apparently became the basis for the phrase's subsequent spread around the world.
Thus, the quote about trusting people and dogs has nothing to do with Bill Murray and was distributed from a parody account. Before that, she had already existed for at least three years without being tied to the actor.
Cover photo: still from the movie “True Friend”
Read on topic:
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- Is it true that Will Smith begged to give him the dog from the movie “I Am Legend”, but the trainer refused the actor?
- Did Charlie Chaplin say: “I was never an angel, but I always tried to be a man”?
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