After divorce, Bill Murray looks for renewal

NEW YORK - The deadpan and depressed characters Bill Murray has specialized in portraying as an actor in recent years have always stood in contrast to the life-of-the-party guy he is in real life — whether on a golf course or shuttling people around downtown Stockholm in a golf cart, as he did last year.

But Murray said he identified anew with those characters — like the dour Herman Blume in "Rushmore" — when his wife of nearly 11 years filed for divorce in May. In the papers filed by Jennifer Butler Murray, she alleged that Murray abused her and was addicted to alcohol and marijuana.

"That was devastating," Murray said. "That was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my entire life."

Though the freshness of such ...