Since its first air date of October 11th, 1975, Saturday Night Live has had many hosts come through the halls of Studio 8H. The first ever hosting gig for the show went to comedian George Carlin.
Those who would follow that title of SNL host range from actors, politicians, musicians, professional athletes, returning cast members, and Steven Seagal. Many sketch comedy shows have come and gone; SNL has become an institution of the craft. So when you get a chance to host the show, you never pass it up.
Some are so good at hosting that they have been called back multiple times. You’ll hear the term “Five Timers Club” a lot on this list. That’s because it’s a select group of hosts who have hosted the show five times or even more; it’s an exclusive club only a few are in, and they stand out the most of the many people who have hosted Saturday Night Live over its nearing half-century run.
20 Emma Stone (5 Times)
Emma Stone is now a two-time Oscar-winning actress who can do no wrong with any project she is attached to. Stone had comedic timing early on, even as the crush of Jonah Hill’s character in Superbad. She evolved into so much more than just playing a throwaway comedic character. Stone makes us laugh with her physical comedy, and the Saturday Night Live writers staff caters to that anytime she’s on the show.
Emma Stone Has Paid Homage to the SNL Greats
More recently, Stone entered the Five-Timers Club in late 2023 while on the Oscar campaign for Poor Things. Stone has stated how much of a Gilda Radner fan she was. She even paid homage to her by playing one of her iconic SNL characters, Roseanne Roseannadanna, in the SNL 40th anniversary special.
Her memorable sketches include “Make Your Own Kind of Music” and the digital short “I Broke My Arm.” The actress is clearly in an experimental phase, so maybe that means we will get more of her on the show.
19 Bill Murray (5 Times)
Bill Murray is one of the most successful former cast members. A comedic actor who dominated the 1980s, a decade that followed his run on Saturday Night Live in the late ’70s. Murray was hired to replace Chevy Chase on the show, which is always a topic of controversy among the SNL inner circle. Murray became one of the most bankable stars of the 1980s with the Ghostbusters franchise and other films like Scrooged and Groundhog Day.
Murray Has Not Hosted Since 1999
Here’s how old Saturday Night Live is. Bill Murray has not hosted the show in a quarter of a century. It could be time to bring him back. Murray has become a bit of an internet icon, with his face on t-shirts and the film Zombieland devoting ten minutes of the runtime to his cameo in the film. Murray’s dry, witty humor gelled with audiences in the 1970s and still does to this day.
18 Paul Rudd (5 Times)
The seemingly ageless Paul Rudd has had an illustrious, three-decade-long career. From Clueless to the MCU, the charm and wit of Rudd have kept fans coming back for more every year. Although his screen presence is highly entertaining, his comedic delivery thrives in front of a live audience just as much, hence why Lorene Michaels gets in touch with his agent from time to time.
13 Years to Get to the Five-Timers Club
Paul Rudd’s most recent SNL hosting gig was back in 2021. Just as the world was trying to put COVID-19 in the rearview, then came the Omnicron variant. The show had pre-taped sketches due to there being no live audience for the event. However, Rudd was still able to be inducted into the Five-Timers club that night, an event that was 13 years in the making, as his first appearance as an SNL host was back in 2008.
17 Kristen Wiig (5 Times)
Kristen Wiig‘s humor is so effortless. Her versatility in going from an upscale ditz in one sketch, to giving us a very relatable character like the crazy Target lady we have all encountered in the retail chain before. Wiig’s characters she played on SNL all felt original, like she walked around and people watched and wrote all the notes down that were needed. Even though she left SNL for bigger projects, we see why she comes back to host from time to time.
The Newest Member of the SNL Five-Timers Club
Wiig returned in April 2024 to host the show for a fifth time. Many have called her most recent duty the funniest episode of the season so far. Wiig took part in some digital shorts, and brought back a few memorable characters from her run as a cast member on the show, one of which was Aunt Linda who shows up on Weekend Update to critique the most recent Oscar wins. Wiig’s comic timing is a national treasure that we will never get enough of.
16 Jonah Hill (5 Times)
If you think about the shape of comedy over the last couple decades, Jonah Hill has been an integral part of it. Films like Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Get Him to the Greek put him on the map. The California native went to school in New York City, where he studied acting, producing, and theater. His studies would go on to make him a perfect fit for an SNL candidate.
Jonah and Leo
Jonah Hill took part in the now iconic Five-Timers club sketch that was spoken about previously on this list. He is not in the Five Timers Club with numerous sketches people have laughed at over and over again. However, one of his hosting duties stands out the most to us all.
During his monologue, he had his Wolf of Wall Street co-star Leonardo DiCaprio make an appearance, where the pair pretended to be Jack and Rose from Titanic in the famous “I’m Flying” scene from the film.
15 Candice Bergen (5 Times)
The longevity of Candice Bergen is one of the best stories in show business. Hailing from sunny southern California, Bergen got her career started in modeling before making the jump into acting. It’s a hard jump to do, but Bergen succeeded. Her sitcom, Murphy Brown, is what she is mainly known for in her career. Lasting ten seasons and receiving countless Emmys.
The First Woman to Host Saturday Night Live
Although Bergen is in the coveted Five Timers Club, there is another acolyte that goes with that title: Candice Bergen was the first woman to ever host the show. Opening the door for a long list of talented women in a male-dominated industry to own an episode of SNL for a night. Her five times as host of the show spanned from the show’s first season in 1975 all the way until 1990. The most memorable moment is her sketch with Gilda Radner titled ‘Extremely Stupid’, where Bergen breaks character and laughs uncontrollably.
14 Ben Affleck (5 Times)
Ben Affleck went from struggling actor to Academy Award-winning screenwriter with his best friend in the 1990s for the film Good Will Hunting. Affleck is a private guy with a very public life; he’s played Batman, become a successful director, and co-starred in the film Gigli with his future wife, Jennifer Lopez. His comedic range can now be seen in Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, but he has also given us some memorable SNL moments as a host.
Affleck’s Versatility
Ben Affleck’s versatility can be seen in all aspects of his work. His comedic timing always surprises us; he knows how to collaborate well. Affleck’s impressions are unexpected, as more recently he appeared in sketches as MSNBC correspondent Keith Olbermann, while also delivering great sketches, like the New Beginnings Camp sketch, where he plays a counselor at a camp that is trying to turn gay kids straight.
It took Affleck a little over a decade, but he, too, is a member of the Five-Timers Club.
13 Woody Harrelson (5 Times)
Woody Harrelson’s hosting duties for Saturday Night Live date back to 1989. The actor has given us roles in films like Natural Born Killers and shows like True Detective, where Harrelson brings his A-game of great drama. Yet, he also makes us laugh in films like Zombieland and Semi-Pro. Harreslon fits in well with whoever is in the SNL writers room.
The COVID Monologue
More recently, Harrelson’s hosting duties got him in the crosshairs of internet chatter due to his monologue where he joked about the COVID vaccine in a subliminal kind of way. Harrelson caught some flak from the press, as most jokes with statements do when they don’t seem to land in an SNL opening monologue. Regardless, Harrelson is in the Five-Timers Club as of 2022.
12 Will Ferrell (5 Times)
Saturday Night Live is an incubator for comedic talent; many go on to have great careers after leaving there; some go on to become mega stars who define comedy; Will Ferrell is the latter. From his arrival in the mid-1990s to his exit in 2002, Ferrell would go on to star in classics like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights, Elf, and Step Brothers.
Ferrell’s Return to Saturday Night Live
Eventually, one of the biggest stars to leave the show would return. Will Ferrell would join the Five Timers Club. Ferrell and a few others who are on this list are some of the few former cast members to return to host the show. Usually, when he returns to host, Ferrell brings his bits of oddball, over-the-top humor while giving us the characters we all loved he played when he was on the show. Nobody ever topped Ferrell’s George W. Bush impersonation, and nobody ever will.
11 The Rock (5 Times)
There is no bigger movie star than The Rock these days, or, should we say, no bigger wrestler, because Dwayne Johnson has stepped back into the squared circle as of late. The Rock was born to be an action star in Hollywood; he’s gone on to do more than that with his attachment to big-name brands and doing big business for Hollywood. He’s also hosted SNL five times now.
More Than a Wrestler
In the early 2000s, it was The Rock who carried the torch for the WWE. He had massive crossover appeal. Saturday Night Live was the perfect audition for the star he would become, as what followed was super stardom for Dwayne Johnson. The Rock was not the first wrestler to ever host SNL, though.
March of 1985 saw the hosting duties of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. The pair hosted on March 30th, 1985, the very first Wrestlemania ever was the next night in New York City. Hogan and Mr. T’s gig as SNL hosts was more of a promo for the event. The Rock, however, got to stretch his acting wings a bit more, showing us all that he was more than just big muscles and trash talk.
10 Justin Timberlake (5 Times)
Every era of Saturday Night Live has that one host who seems to come back once a season; the early 2000s and into the 2010s saw that one performer being Justin Timberlake. Originally a member of NSYNC, he branched out into being more than just a pretty face and had some unforgettable SNL episodes that stand out among the show as a whole.
SNL Elevated Justin Timberlake’s Career
With respect to the other members of NSYNC, there was just something about Justin Timberlake and his star power. When he first hosted the show in 2003, not long after he launched his solo career, it was clear Timberlake was a duel threat in acting and singing. His sketches with the likes of Jimmy Fallon and Andy Samberg over the years live rent-free in the minds of many fans of the show. Even if you hated boy bands, you gave JT a past because of how funny he could be.
9 Scarlett Johansson (6 Times)
Scarlett Johansson has done it all; she’s an Academy Award-nominated actress. She starred alongside SNL alumn BIll Murray in Sophia Coppola’s classic drama, Lost in Translation, a film that skyrocketed her to the level she is at today. Are we forgetting something? Oh yeah, she’s Black Widow in the MCU, a true fan favorite of the franchise.
Scarlett Johansson’s Personal Ties to Saturday Night Live
The six-time host is known for some memorable sketches. One of which was the more recent political spoof of the Republican Party’s response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. In the sketch, she impersonated Senator Katie Britt’s odd demeanor in the actual video. An event that had many people rolling around in tears from laughter.
Johansson also has some personal ties to the show. Her husband, Colin Jost, has been a writer for SNL since 2005 and co-anchor of Weekend Update.
8 Tina Fey (6 Times)
Tina Fey has made a lasting impact on both SNL and other areas of the entertainment industry. Fey would leave SNL after nearly a decade of being on both the writing and talent staff. At one point, she was even the head writer on the show. The comedian has hosted award shows, starred in memorable comedies, and penned one of the best high school comedies of all time, Mean Girls.
“For Weekend Update, I’m Tina Fey.”
Fey is remembered by many as portraying both Sarah Palin and co-hosting Weekend Update with Amy Poehler. However, some forget that she has come back and hosted SNL six times since leaving the show in 2006. Her ties to the show have always remained strong, as her impact on the program pushed female comics to the forefront of the cast.
7 Elliot Gould (6 Times)
With a career spanning over seven decades, Elliot Gould has been the leading man in one of everyone’s favorite 1970s satirical noir films, The Long Goodbye, as well as supporting roles in American History X and the updated Ocean’s films. A versatile actor who indeed brought his charm to the stage whenever he hosted SNL.
Six Times in Four Years
It’s easy to forget Elliot Gould had a great run hosting the show; maybe that’s because it has been over forty years since he made his sixth appearance as the host. In the early days of Saturday Night Live, it was easy to have hosts be more frequent every year, with the show still in its early stages and on a shoestring budget.
Gould came back in true fashion in 2021 in the famous Five-Timers sketch that highlighted that although Paul Rudd was the current sexiest man alive, at one point, years earlier, so was Elliot Gould.
6 Danny Devito (6 Times)
Danny Devito has gone the distance in both television and film over his nearly fifty-year career. Appearing in movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and playing a role on the ABC/NBC show Taxi in the late 1970s and into the early 1980s. Devito has hosted six times. Many sketches have shown his comedic range, which we all love today.
Devito’s Five-Timer Membership was Awarded in 1993
Long before It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ever hit the television screen, Devito was already in SNL’s Five Timer’s Club. One of his first times hosting the show was with his then wife, actress Rhea Perlman, in 1983.
Devito would also be featured on a few episodes here and there, one of which was when Charlie Day hosted the show and Devito was a part of his monologue. The actor best known for his comedic skills played in many sketches, where he was Scrooge in the sketch “Bankrupt Scrooge” and also wore some makeup to play Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
5 Christopher Walken (7 Times)
Christopher Walken‘s illustrious career dates back to the 1970s with his unsettling performance opposite Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter. Over time, Walken would make appearances as a host on Saturday Night Live, and it began to shed the image he had of all the crazy characters he had played in past films and show audiences that he has a ton of offbeat comedic range.
“I Got a Fever…”
Walken has hosted SNL seven times. He was the first host to join the Five-Timers Club in the 21st century. This living legend of an actor has gotten away with some tongue-in-cheek humor in sketches like the Civil War-themed sketch about Colonel Angus (what’s so funny about it is for you to figure out).
In the late 1990s, he was in a sketch where he played the music producer for Blue Oyster Cult, and he demanded the band’s cowbell player (Will Ferrell) play the cowbell like he never had before. The result is one of the funniest sketches of all time, and one of the most quoted.
4 Tom Hanks (10 Times)
When we think of the best living actors today, Tom Hanks is usually at the forefront of that. SNL and Tom Hanks go hand in hand. We often forget that the actor got his start in classic comedies like The Burbs and Bachelor Party before going into more serious roles like Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Hanks has doubled his Five-Timers Club card by hosting the show ten times now.
Hanks Hosting SNL Always Generates Buzz
Hanks hosted his fifth show in 1990; it was a different time in his career and in the world. He has come back and given us the iconic character David S. Pumpkins. Hanks awkwardly played a down-home, disheveled white guy in a MAGA hat on Black Jeopardy, who, for a brief moment, built a bridge over the racial divide in America at the time.
Hanks was also the first to host the show during the COVID lockdown. He did the monologue from his own kitchen. It was only fitting that he hosted the show at the start of the pandemic because weeks earlier, when Hanks had gotten COVID, that was a sign to many of how serious the situation was.
3 John Goodman (13 Times)
John Goodman is one of the most frequent hosts in the history of the show. The Missouri native moved to Hells Kitchen in NYC shortly after college; from there, he would appear in many Broadway plays, such as 1776 (1975). His love for stage acting must be a big help in having him come back time and time again to SNL. His work in comedies and dramas throughout his career shows his range as both a leading man and a character actor.
Goodman Can Do It All on SNL
John Goodman has not been back to 30 Rockefeller Center since 2013 to host the show. However, he pops in from time to time as a featured guest. Showing up in monologues here and there. In the late 1990s, Goodman was featured as Linda Tripp in the sketches that centered around the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal.
At one point in time, Goodman actually auditioned to be a cast member of Saturday Night Live for the sixth season, which was a low point in the show when it was an entirely new cast. Goodman says his SNL audition was the worst thing he has ever done.
2 Steve Martin (16 Times)
Steve Martin‘s brand of comedy has been around since Saturday Night Live began. It does feel like Martin is slightly methodical with the projects he takes on, because every film or show he has taken part in usually strikes gold. Whether it be Planes, Trains, and Automobiles in the late 1980s or the more recent Only Murders in the Building with the pairing of Selena Gomez and fellow SNL alum Martin Short, Steve Martin knows when something is funny.
The Sixteen-Time Host
Steve Martin helped boost viewership in the early days of Saturday Night Live. Ratings showed their viewership jumped by one million people when he hosted, which explains why he was on so much in the early days of the show. Martin joined the Five-Timers Club in less than two years; he may as well have just been part of the cast.
SNL was Steve Martin’s playground to expand his craft. A prime example of that is when he debuted his song “King Tut” in a sketch on the show; the song would go on to sell a million copies. Steve Martin at one point had the most hosting appearances on the show, then someone else came along and took it.
1 Alec Baldwin (17 Times)
Alec Baldwin has treated Saturday Night Live like a part-time job for the last thirty years. Baldwin has been in countless films, some successful, some not. However, he thrives mostly on SNL. We see him like we have never seen him before when he is on the show. He’s kept coming back between shoot dates for whatever film he’s working on and delivered memorably good performances on the show that have even had his harshest critics tip their hats to him a bit.
Alec Baldwin vs. Donald Trump
If you’re going to be the President of the United States, prepare for SNL to make fun of you. Baldwin’s Trump impression is over the top, but then again, look who he’s making fun of. He received criticism from the former president, but it was his impersonation that got us through a polarizing four years.
Alec Baldwin played Trump even when he wasn’t hosting the show; he was just on every week to do the role. Who would have thought in 1990 that it would be Alec Baldwin who would surpass Steve Martin and have the most hosting gigs on the show? His “Schweddy Balls” sketch feels like cheap humor that creeps up on you and makes you laugh uncontrollably. Anytime Alec Baldwin is on Saturday Night Live, Sunday morning, we are all talking about it.
