I have missed many, many casts. I’ll vote Dana Carvey. But let me give a most honorable shout out to Jack Handey.
#3: When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car.
#2: If God dwells inside us, like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas because that’s what He’s getting.
#1: It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
Melissa Villasenor and Heidi Gardner are giving her a run for the money now but Cecily’s been there for a while and was a strong performer the whole time. She didn’t do well on Weekend Update but blame the producers for that.
Phil Harman is throwing me off a little because of the similarity to his Simpsons work. But I think he’s my best all-around.
However, for me, Chris Farley is the funniest overall. The Matt Foley character is totally solidified. Introduction here (with awesome Hartman backing) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2VIEY9-A8
No one else could have done that.
The Chippendales Audition vs Patrick Swayze is hysterical. Again, no one else could have done that.
The Lunch Lady:
Lunch Lady land
We’ve got two basic categories here. There are the STARS, like Murphy, Belushi, and McKinnon, who you simply can’t take your eyes off anytime they’re on camera; and there are the glues, like Hartman, Ackroyd, Carvey, and Jan Hooks, who played a hundred different characters well.
So I’m going to pick one from Column A - Eddie Murphy - and one from Column B - Phil Hartman.
Ask me on another day and I might give you two other names, and two different ones the day after that.
Very hard for me to pick between John Belushi and Kate McKinnon.
Jane Curtin had an amazing career after SNL. She did TWO hugely successful series where she played two very different characters, and never broke. She was mostly the straight character on Kate & Allie, but on 3rd Rock, she finally got to have fun, and she did. It was the campiest show ever, except it was good. It was really, really good camp. I never did know what Susan Sontag thought of it, though. I wish I did.
What’s more, they were shows in two very different styles. 3rd Rock was farce. Kate and Allie was Dramady. Not as heavy-handed as some later shows, like Family Ties, but it had its heavy moments, and it tackled “issues.” It also played in the early hour, when it had to be superclean, but it still got its points across.
But, we’ll never know what Gilda Radner might have done if she had lived.
Jack Handey was a writer, not a cast member. He created not only Deep Thoughts but also Toonces the Driving Cat, Happy Fun Ball, and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
SNL has had many great writers over the years. “Who is the greatest SNL writer?” would be a fascinating discussion to have if enough of us knew enough about the writers and what they did, but I suspect most of us don’t. (I know I don’t.)
I disagree. Hader is great, but the problem that he and Fallon had is their tendency to break character and laugh during a skit.
If I had to pick just one, it’d be Phil Hartman. A very funny guy and an amazingly skilled actor, a chameleon who could play Ronald Reagan just as well as he could play Bill Clinton. Close after him I’d say Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Jon Lovitz, Tina Fey, Norm McDonald and Dana Carvey.
Nitpick to several posters in this thread: as I actually learned here on the Dope, the name is spelled “Aykroyd”, not “Ackroyd”.
I’m shocked nobody has yet named Chevy Chase! 
RDJ also has an Oscar nomination for his work in Chaplin.
So do Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Joan Cusack, and Randy Quaid.
Radner certainly was going to do well. She already had starred on Broadway (I happened to see her in Lunch Hour; she was fine*).
But Curtin’s success was head and shoulders above the rest. I don’t know if any other cast member won two Emmys for acting.
*Three of the other four actors on stage with her had long-term success on TV.
If she stuck to live performances (or filmed before a live audience). I think she required that immediate audience feedback to do her best work. I can’t think of a single memorable film scene.
From Wikipedia:
Julia Louse-Dreyfus “has won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series seven times; once for her role on The New Adventures of Old Christine (2006) and six consecutive wins for playing Selina Meyer on Veep (2012–17), as well as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series on one occasion for Seinfeld (1996). As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy wins as an actor for the same role and is tied with Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy wins (with eight).”
Gilda Radner’s screen debut, as it happens, was in The Last Detail with Jack Nicholson and (wait for it) Randy Quaid. She played a hippy at a New York party; I don’t think she had any lines.
Bill Murray. It’s a real Cinderella story.
Just for fun, Phil Hartman in President Reagan, Mastermind.
“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? Maybe, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”
In my opinion Chevy was sometimes amazingly funny for about half of SNL’s first season and has seldom if ever been funny since then in any venue. FWIW a few years ago I rewatched that entire first season and was surprised by how (in hindsight) less impressive he seemed in comparison to John, Dan, and Gilda.