How And When Did John Belushi Die? What Were His Last Words?

John Belushi became well-known as one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live in 1975. However, just seven years later, he was found dead in a Hollywood hotel.

Belushi moved to New York in 1973, and by 1975, he caught the attention of Lorne Michaels, which led to his role on Saturday Night Live. While on the show, he and Dan Aykroyd formed the famous duo, the Blues Brothers. They toured across the country as a musical act, released a double-platinum album, and made a movie together.

By the time The Blues Brothers movie came out in 1980, Belushi had become a well-known star. However, even as his career was growing, he faced struggles with drug addiction.

“We had everything going for us, and yet because of those damn drugs, everything just got out of control,” Belushi’s high school sweetheart and wife, Judy Belushi-Pisano, told PEOPLE in 1990.

On March 5, 1982, Belushi was found dead from an apparent drug overdose. He was 33 years old.

“John wasn’t perfect,” Judy, who passed away in July 2024, told PEOPLE in 2020. “But he was a full human being — caring and adventurous and kind. And he not only made people laugh. He made them feel.”

From the chaotic last hours of his life to the legacy he left behind, here is what we know about John Belushi’s death.

How did John Belushi die?

On March 5, 1982, Belushi was found dead in his room at the Chateau Marmont by his personal trainer, Bill Wallace. Wallace had come to deliver a typewriter to him, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Although the police did not initially suspect foul play or drugs, the coroner’s report, shared in The New York Times, revealed a different story about the hours leading up to his tragic death.

The night before Belushi died, the Animal House actor reportedly had dinner with Robert De Niro on the Sunset Strip, attended a comedy show at the Improv in West Hollywood, and then drank heavily while listening to music at On the Rox, a private club on the Strip. After the clubs closed, Belushi continued partying at the Chateau Marmont, according to Rolling Stone.

“John was always the guy who went a little too far and wanted to stay too long at the party,” Belushi’s wife, Judy, told in 2020.

After the night of partying and drug use, Belushi complained of hot and cold flashes before eventually falling asleep around 8 a.m., according to the coroner’s report. About four hours later, Wallace found him unconscious and not breathing.

At first, the Los Angeles Police Department reported that Belushi’s death appeared to be from “natural causes,” but needle marks found on his arms suggested an overdose. A few days later, the coroner’s report confirmed that Belushi’s official cause of death was “acute cocaine and heroin intoxication,” according to The New York Times.

There were enough drugs in Belushi’s system to kill a healthy person. The autopsy also found that the comedian was in poor health for his age. He had congestion in his lungs, liver, and spleen, a swollen brain, an enlarged heart, clogged arteries, a distended bladder, and was obese.

Aykroyd was the first person to tell Judy that her husband had died. He told in 2024, “That’s a piece of trauma that will be with me forever. I lament that he’s not around. It’s more than wistfulness: it’s a true lamentation.”

When did John Belushi die?

John Belushi, known as Jake Blues from The Blues Brothers, was found unresponsive by his personal trainer, Bill Wallace, at around 12:30 p.m. on March 5, 1982, according to The New York Times.

“I’m having trouble waking John up,” Wallace told Belushi’s agent, Bernie Brillstein, during a phone call, according to The Hollywood Reporter. After trying CPR, Wallace called Brillstein again and said, “There’s something really wrong with John.”

Wallace then called paramedics, who declared Belushi dead at 12:45 p.m., according to The New York Times. Police and the coroner later determined that Belushi had died sometime between 10:15 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.

Where did John Belushi die?

John Belushi died in Bungalow No. 3 at the Chateau Marmont, a well-known Hollywood hotel where he had been staying since February 28, 1982, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Earlier that winter, Belushi had stayed at the hotel for more than a month while working on the script for Noble Rot, a romantic comedy he hoped would be his next successful project. However, his growing drug problems were causing trouble in his personal life and interfering with his work. Because of this, Belushi’s wife, Judy, chose not to go with him on that final trip to Los Angeles.

“He was abusing cocaine again, and that interfered with everything in our life,” she told in 1990. “I knew he couldn’t handle himself in L.A.; he never could.”

Judy later revealed that she spent years trying to forgive herself for allowing Belushi to go to Los Angeles alone, knowing his self-destructive behavior.

“Guilt is very complicated,” she said. “Part of it is making yourself more important than you really are—thinking ‘I could have stopped this.’ As I began to realize I couldn’t do anything about it, I let go of the guilt.”

Who was with John Belushi when he died?

John Belushi spent the last hours of his life with some of Hollywood’s well-known figures. After leaving On the Rox and heading back to his bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, he was visited by Robin Williams, who had just finished a comedy show, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

De Niro, who had eaten dinner with Belushi earlier and was also staying at the Chateau Marmont, is said to have stopped by Belushi’s bungalow in the early hours of March 5.

However, one person was with Belushi for most of the night and early morning: a backup singer named Cathy Smith, according to Rolling Stone.

Smith later said that she drove Belushi back to his hotel from the Hollywood nightclubs, partied with him, and injected him with drugs during the early morning hours. She stayed with him until around 10 a.m., when she left the Chateau Marmont in Belushi’s car.

Smith said that when she left, she “really didn’t know” if Belushi was sleeping or dead.

How old was John Belushi when he died?

John Belushi was only 33 years old when he died.

“The same violent urge that makes John great will also destroy him,” said SNL writer Michael O’Donoghue a few years before Belushi’s death, according to a 1982 cover story on the comedian. “He’s one of those hysterical personalities that will never be complete.”

Animal House director John Landis shared a similar view, according to the Los Angeles Times: “He abuses his body in ways that would kill bulls,” Landis said a few years before Belushi’s death. “If he doesn’t burn himself out, his potential is unlimited.”

What were John Belushi’s last words?

Belushi’s last words were reportedly spoken to Cathy Smith, who spent his final hours with him.

According to Smith’s account, Belushi took a shower and fell asleep around 8 a.m., as reported by Rolling Stone. However, he was wheezing and shivering while asleep. Smith became worried about his breathing and woke him up to drink a glass of water around 9:30 a.m., she told Rolling Stone. After he drank the water, Smith asked if he needed anything else.

“Just don’t leave me alone,” Belushi said to her, which is believed to be his last words.

Smith, however, left the hotel room about 30 minutes later. When she returned at around 2 p.m., Belushi’s body had been found, and the hotel was filled with police and press.

“In reality, I’m the only person in the world who was there, perhaps, when he died. I’m not quite sure when he died,” Smith told Rolling Stone. “I know I’m the last person who saw him alive.”

What was the public reaction to John Belushi’s death?

Even though Belushi’s drug use and partying habits were well-known to those close to him, it didn’t make his sudden death any easier to accept. His passing left his fans, friends, and family heartbroken. Judy, his wife and high school sweetheart, described the loss as “a gut punch.”

“And then it was like I was thrown into the center of a tornado,” she told in 2020.

Part of that storm was the public’s reaction to Belushi’s death. After he passed away, his fans rushed to visit his grave on Martha’s Vineyard to pay their respects.

This turned the small Chilmark cemetery into a popular spot for tourists. Belushi’s grave received so many visitors, many leaving liquor, beer cans, cigarette butts, and marijuana joints, that Judy had to move his burial site from the center of the cemetery to near the entrance, according to The Ledger.

A similar situation occurred at the Chateau Marmont. The hotel staff completely renovated Bungalow 3 after Belushi’s death in an effort to discourage curious fans, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Were charges ever filed in John Belushi’s death?

Cathy Smith, who was with Belushi the night he died, was briefly questioned and detained by police when she returned to the Chateau Marmont the day his body was found. Police discovered a syringe and a spoon in her purse but released her, according to the Los Angeles Times. Soon after, Smith left Los Angeles and returned to her hometown of Toronto.

However, reporters found Smith, and she agreed to a paid interview with Tony Brenna from The National Enquirer. On June 29, 1982, she appeared on the cover of the tabloid with the headline “I Killed John Belushi.” In the interview, Smith admitted to being responsible for Belushi’s death and described how the comedian, who was afraid of needles, asked her to inject him with cocaine and heroin.

“At 3:30 a.m., I shot up John for the last time,” she told The National Enquirer.

As a result of the interview and the tape of her conversation with Brenna (which The National Enquirer had to give to Los Angeles prosecutors), the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office filed charges against Smith related to Belushi’s death.

In March 1983, Smith was indicted on one count of second-degree murder and 13 counts of administering cocaine and heroin. After several of Belushi’s friends testified that they had seen Smith inject him with drugs the night he died, Smith pled no contest to involuntary manslaughter and three counts of providing and administering drugs.  She was sentenced to three years in prison, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Smith served 15 months in prison and was released on parole in March 1988. She passed away in September 2020 at the age of 73, according to The New York Times.

What is John Belushi’s legacy?

John Belushi’s legacy continues not only in comedy and entertainment but also in the many actors he inspired to get sober after his death.

He has been credited with changing the way drugs were viewed in Hollywood during the 1980s and beyond. “The Belushi tragedy was frightening,” said Williams, who became sober after his friend’s death, in a 1988 interview. “His death scared a whole group of show-business people. It caused a big exodus from drugs.”

More than 40 years after his death, Belushi’s story still influences others. In 2024, John Mulaney shared how SNL creator Lorne Michaels told him about Belushi’s death to help him with his own struggles with addiction.

“He goes, ‘I knew John Belushi for seven years. I’ve been talking about him for 48 years, because that’s the shrapnel that happens when someone goes down like that,’ ” Mulaney said on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.

He continued, “And he goes, ‘You know, John didn’t want to die. You know, he didn’t plan to. Just because it’s a story, just because it’s sort of set in stone like history, people don’t want to die from this.’”

Dan Aykroyd has kept Belushi’s memory alive through several projects, including the 1984 hit Ghostbusters, which he was working on when Belushi died. Aykroyd had originally written the role of Peter Venkman (played by Bill Murray) for Belushi, but after his death, he created the green ghost Slimer as a tribute to his friend.

Aykroyd also started the House of Blues chain of restaurants and music venues in honor of his former Blues Brother.

“Every time I walk into a House of Blues, I think, ‘John, why aren’t you around to enjoy these places where we have the gods of Blues on the wall, the ceiling?’ ” Aykroyd told. “You can be sure I have a drink and I toast a Crystal Head Vodka to him when I’m in these places.”

Belushi is also remembered as a talented actor and comedian whose life and career were cut short.

“The bottom line is he was a charming guy and a brilliant performer,” said director John Landis about Belushi in a 2019 interview with The Guardian. “He was strong like a tractor and smart like a bull and he really could have gone on to do anything.”