Murray was a fish out of water making ‘The Life Aquatic’

Now that it’s done, actor Bill Murray professes to be quite satisfied with his latest film, “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” which opens Christmas Day.

Making the movie was another story.

“It was a tortuous experience. I hated going to work,” Murray says. “I was so miserable that it was a real challenge to work every day. It was what … I imagined being in prison is like.”

Murray says virtually everything with such a remarkably straight face, and has such a reputation for goofing, that it’s hard to tell if he’s being serious.

But this time he is. Murray’s family – his wife, Jennifer Butler, and their four kids (he also has two sons from a previous marriage) – live in upstate New York. During the long “Life Aquatic” shoot Murray was in Italy and missed them terribly.

And that’s not all. Production on the film coincided with the Chicago Cubs’ ultimately futile run last year for the World Series, and Murray, a Chicago native, wasn’t there to see it firsthand. (He had a satellite feed set up in Italy so he could at least watch from a distance).

Let’s just say Murray was in a grumpy frame of mind making this movie, and still is just a little bit, Italy notwithstanding.

“You don’t think of Italy as anything but sunny, picking a grape and lying on a hillside, but it was cold,” he says.

“It got like bone-cold out on the water, on the Mediterranean, shooting at night. You got cold like nobody’s business. Colder than I’ve ever been in Chicago. Cold, really densely, brutally cold. I don’t know if I’m over it yet.”

Murray had worked with director Wes Anderson twice before, on “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

But “The Life Aquatic” – an exceptionally quirky comedy that serves as something of a homage to the maritime celebrity Jacques Cousteau, with a little Captain Ahab thrown in for good measure – put him front and center as the title character.

“He’s a very physical guy, a very physical actor,” said Anderson of Murray. “He might not have the build of a ‘Die Hard’-era Bruce Willis, but he has the same desire.

“And I was always excited by the idea of him doing a shootout in a Speedo, robe and flip-flops. That’s certainly something that’s never been done before in cinema.”

“The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” is Anderson’s most ambitious film yet, with the daunting location shoots, a big ship, pirates and animated fish.

“I knew it was going to be big,” says Murray. “I thought, ‘Well, here we go.’ He had been going this way for some time. All directors, once they have some success, they want to spend a whole heck of a lot of money.”

But it’s the characters that Anderson creates for Murray that keep him coming back to work with the director. They’re not one-note stereotypes, but characters with a multitude of facets and layers.

“All the emotions are expressed. That’s kind of fun to play,” Murray says. “You don’t get to do that in life that often. You’re supposed to obey some rules of politeness or respect.”

The birthday bunch

Singer-bassist Lemmy (Motorhead) is 59. Actor Clarence Gilyard (“Walker, Texas Ranger”) is 49. Actress Stephanie Hodge (“Unhappily Ever After”) is 48. Actor Mark Valley (“Boston Legal”) is 40. Actor Diedrich Bader (“The Drew Carey Show”) is 38. Singer Ricky Martin is 33. “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest is 30.