John Candy biography delves into battles Canadian comic faced away from cameras

John Candy appears at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles in April, 1988. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP

TORONTO — A new biography of Canadian comedy legend John Candy delves into the private battles he faced away from the cameras.

According to close friend and fellow “SCTV” alum Dave Thomas, those darker dimensions are a key reason Candy stirred such strong affection from fans and critics alike, allowing him to transcend even schlocky scripts that dot his resume.

It’s among the insights Toronto-born author Paul Myers posits in “John Candy: A Life in Comedy,” which Myers said is his attempt to dissect the creative drive that led to indelible Candy performances in films including “Splash,” “Uncle Buck” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

“Everyone can say platitudes about somebody and say he was the nicest man. And then you want to know: OK, but how? What was he (like) and was he ever in a bad mood? And I found out, yeah, he was in a bad mood, sometimes. And sometimes there was a sense that people weren’t being fair to him or being fair to people that he cared about,” said Myers, reached in Berkeley, Calif., where he tapes an interview show, “The Record Show Podcast.”

“The drama didn’t come from discovering any dark secret about him as much as it came from (learning), it wasn’t always easy being John Candy.”

The book includes interviews with famous friends and colleagues including Tom Hanks, Catherine O’Hara, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase and Martin Short, as well as quotes from archived reports and broadcasts. Many describe a kind and generous soul who was often as jovial and endearing as his onscreen characters, which extend to scene-stealing parts in “Home Alone,” “The Blues Brothers” and “National Lampoon’s Vacation.”

But interviews also reveal that Candy privately stewed over fat jokes directed at him in scripts and in size-shaming comments he frequently encountered from reporters.

Close friend Thomas said Candy “felt horrible” about a particularly exploitative scene in “Stripes” where he had to wrestle in the mud with scantily clad women, a gag that hasn’t aged well for denigrating his size while playing into sexist tropes.

The film’s director Ivan Reitman, who died in 2022, recalled it took “some time to convince” Candy to do the scene, and said he only learned afterwards he had been upset.

Others in the book recalled binge drinking, anxiety attacks and difficulty in saying no, including to a final film job that sent Candy to a high-altitude set in sweltering Mexico where he died of a heart attack in 1994.

Thomas said that while Candy absolutely embodied the gregarious “Johnny Toronto” persona he’s most associated with, “he had this other side.”

“He was conflicted. He was insecure and he had doubts about himself,” Thomas is quoted as saying in the book.

Candy himself identified unresolved trauma from the sudden death of his father, just before his fifth birthday. The book quotes a CTV interview in 1993 in which Candy said he unconsciously took on the family’s “father role” as provider and had only recently “really started to deal with that.”

Myers also provides a detailed reconstruction of Candy’s final days in Mexico with help from several people including co-stars John C. McGinley and Richard Lewis, who died in 2024. Various accounts describe Candy as particularly heavy at the time, struggling to breathe in the thinner air, and in apparent pain during the shoot, although he never complained and threw regular parties to keep cast-and-crew spirits high.

“I would never say that the movie killed him. I would say that the timing was terrible,” Myers said in an interview, noting Candy only did that film because of a contractual obligation.

“And it makes me so sad to this day to think of him dying in Mexico, away from his family.”

Myers credits Candy with inspiring a new generation of comics, including Conan O’Brien, Judd Apatow and Myers’ own famous brother, Mike Myers, who enrolled in Second City workshops on Candy’s advice.

“If he hadn’t said that, who knows how that story would have played out,” said Myers, whose other celebrity books include “The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy” and “Barenaked Ladies: Public Stunts, Private Stories.”

Missing from the book is input from Candy’s widow Rose, and children Jennifer and Chris.

Myers said they were the first people he reached out to but was told they already had plans for their own biographical project. He suspects it was the documentary that just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, “John Candy: I Like Me.”

“It’s not sleuthing to figure that one out,” he said.

The film, produced by Ryan Reynolds and directed by Colin Hanks, premieres Friday on Prime Video, just three days after Myers’ book hits shelves.

The burst of Candy content comes just before the performer would have turned 75 on Oct. 31. Myers suspects that may be behind what seems to be an explosion of interest in the late comedy legend.

“The zeitgeist is telling us something. It’s time to look at John Candy,” he said.

“John Candy: A Life in Comedy” comes out Tuesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 6, 2025.

Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press