The 10 Best Saturday Night Live Guest Hosts Ever, Ranked

Hosting “Saturday Night Live” is one of the most exclusive gigs in show business. Spanning 50 years, the late night sketch comedy show averages around 20 episodes each season, with only a few exceptions, giving us exactly 970 episodes of “SNL” so far (and counting). That might sound like a lot, but it’s relatively few, especially when you consider that the show has a handful of favorites who have hosted the show multiple times. In fact, the top three actors who have hosted “SNL” the most during the show’s run (Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, and John Goodman) are spread across 45 episodes by themselves, which is basically two full seasons.

Not only is hosting “SNL” a tough job to land, but it’s also not easy when you get it, which is why plenty of the biggest stars haven’t done it. “Avengers” and “Captain America” franchise star Chris Evans even admitted to being terrified of potentially hosting the show. The live nature of the program means there are last minute changes to scripts right up until and even throughout the live broadcast. Reading from cue cards, hitting marks, having precise timing, and generally delivering both a good and funny performance is difficult in itself, but try doing it live with millions of people watching around the world. 

Despite the rarity of hosting “SNL” and the difficulty of the job, there are several stars who have excelled in the role across 50 years, and it’s not just those who have hosted over a dozen times (Ariana Grande being a recent example). Regardless of how many episodes they’ve hosted, here’s a list of the 10 best “Saturday Night Live” hosts of all time. 

Note: We’ve excluded former “SNL” cast members from this list, simply because that just wouldn’t be fair. All right? Let’s dig in.

Drew Barrymore is the only person on this list to have the supremely rare distinction of also being the youngest person to host “SNL,” not long after “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” helped turn her into an adorable child star (and made her think E.T. was real). When Barrymore was just seven years old, she stepped onto the stage of Studio 8H, and even though she hosted during the tumultuous and maligned Dick Ebersol years of the show, it was clear that she was just on an entirely different level than most young actors her age. That alone might be enough to make her one of the best hosts, but on top of that, she’s hosted five more times with great success, including one time after an anthrax scare.

First, let’s just remember how cute Barrymore was when she joined the Whiners family back in 1982. Flashing forward, we can’t forget the all-time great sketch from 2001 (watch above) where Barrymore plays a friend of The Love-ahs, Roger and Virginia Klarvin (Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch), which resulted in everybody in the sketch breaking character. Plus, Barrymore got to match mischief with Kristen Wiig’s Gilly, went toe-to-toe with Bill Hader’s Vinny Vedecci, and she was lucky enough to star in a retro SNL Digital Short. She also delivered an impressive array of impressions like Courtney Love, Charlize Theron, Anna Nicole Smith, and Sharon Osbourne, though those aren’t easily found online.

Barrymore once had the honor of being the woman who has hosted “SNL” the most. Though she has been outshined a bit (as this list will illustrate), which is bound to happen when you haven’t hosted since 2009, her legacy still stands strong.

Now, before you get mad at us for including John Mulaney in this list, you’ll recall that the comedian was never a cast member on the show. While he had a few occasional appearances at the Weekend Update desk, he was only ever a writer on the series. But thanks to his incredible stand-up chops and brilliant comedic mind, he left his mark on “SNL” as the co-writer of the Stefan sketches that made Bill Hader break and many more memorable bits.

But Mulaney’s stints as an “SNL” host are a whole other animal. Even though his range as a sketch comedian is limited, it’s the sharpness and energy that he consistently brings that makes him shine. Not only are his monologues always stellar, since they’re pure stand-up material drawn from his act, but he’s made a habit of ensuring that some kind of New York-centric musical sketch makes it on air, such as “Diner Lobster” (above), “Bodega Bathroom,” “Airport Sushi,” and “New York Musical” — all absolute bangers. Mulaney’s signature delivery style also makes him great in game show sketches like “What’s That Name?” as well as this perfect recreation of classic Nickelodeon shows from the ’90s.

Mulaney is still hosting regularly, including a stint this fall for season 50, and we’re sure there are plenty more episodes with him to come. 

Ryan Gosling is fresh off delivering one of the greatest episodes of “SNL” in recent memory, and with just three episodes under his belt, he’s proven to be an absolutely incredible host. Gosling is consistent in his “SNL” performances, always making great comedy by using his outstanding acting talents to play things as genuinely as possible for maximum hilarity. 

For example, there’s the “Papyrus” sketch, where he’s convincingly driven mad by the seemingly lazy use of a stock font for James Cameron’s “Avatar” logo, and there was also a phenomenal follow-up that completed a proper story arc. He brought the same kind of dedicated energy to the “Santa Baby” pre-taped sketch, that has touches of Quentin Tarantino. Plus, how could we talk about Gosling hosting “SNL” without bringing up the fact that he starred in the first “Close Encounters” sketch with Kate McKinnon (below), and his installments of the recurring bit are easily the best of the entire run.

Finally, also making Gosling’s appearances so fun are his penchant for breaking. It never ruins a sketch, and even when he does break, you can tell he’s doing everything he can to keep composure and make sure the sketch doesn’t get derailed. Just take the recent Beavis and Butt-Head sketch, which broke pretty much every cast member involved.

We can only hope that Gosling keeps returning to “SNL,” and we can’t wait for him to join the Five Timers Club.

Emma Stone has quickly become one of the best “SNL” hosts ever by simply being unafraid to go for it every single time she hosts. The star of “La La Land” and “Poor Things” is always game to play the most obnoxious and wild characters, but she can also easily play the straight-woman and add dramatic chops to any given sketch too. Having only just joined the Five Timers Club in 2023, she’s already proven that she could easily be a regular cast member of the show without a problem.

Take Stone’s most recent hosting stint, for example, where she played a perplexed woman who somehow won a tortoise on the Question Quest game show, and then played a male record executive acting out future movie trailers set to the slowed down tune of “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” But Stone brings her full-on acting chops to “SNL” too, as evidenced by the exquisite commercial parody “Wells for Boys” and the hilarious pre-taped sketch “The Actress.” Plus, Stone has no problem showing off her musical side too, with the likes of the SNL Digital Short “I Broke My Arm” and the holiday favorite “The Christmas Candle.” Furthermore, she can easily get downright absurd, as evidenced by her encouraging poster girl role with Pete Davidson and the clumsy, sloppy kisses with Andrew Garfield in a Spider-Man sketch (above).

Since Stone is still in the prime of her career, she’s only going to make her profile in “SNL” history bigger, but as of now, it’s already quite remarkable.

You can’t talk about the best “SNL” hosts of all time without mentioning one of the most surprisingly satisfying talents to ever grace the stage. After beginning his career in “The Mickey Mouse Club” and finding fame in the beloved boy band *NSYNC, who would have thought that Justin Timberlake would be one of the funniest and most skilled “SNL” hosts of all time?

Timberlake has hosted just five times, enough to get him that coveted velvet Five Timers Club jacket, but in those episodes alone, he’s made quite an impression as a comedic talent. First, the singer made his debut as host while pulling double duty as the show’s musical guest. That’s not an easy feat, but he quickly proved why he had the confidence to tackle the show this way. In that first-time hosting stint, he joined Jimmy Fallon for what would become the recurring Barry Gibb Talk Show sketch, combining his musical and comedy skills at once. But that’s not the only time he would display such talents.

During the era of SNL Digital Shorts, Timberlake also helped elevate The Lonely Island, especially when it came to their musical prowess, with the arrival of the constantly replayed Christmas sketch “D**k in a Box,” and it kicked off a legacy of working together on faux hip-hop and R&B songs that helped define that period of “SNL,” including “Motherlover” and “3-Way.” Normally, that would be enough to make Timberlake an “SNL” legend, but don’t forget that he also brought more holiday joy with as the “Wrappinville” mascot, again with Jimmy Fallon, as well as shilling Moët & Chandon champagne with Cecily Strong and Vanessa Bayer’s confused adult film stars. Plus, even though it’s not online officially anymore due to music rights, Timberlake also danced his heart out with Beyoncé for a riff on her “Single Ladies” music video with Andy Samberg and Bobby Moynihan.

Timberlake is just one of those rare talents who can seemingly do it all, and he frequently does it all on “SNL.”

Of course we can’t go through this list without recognizing Christopher Walken. Even though he’s hosted much less than the decorated guests above him, he stands tall on this list, having been part of some of the best sketches in “SNL” history. 

First, Christopher Walken gets the rare distinction of having his own recurring sketch that began back in 1990. “The Continental” sketches perfectly used Walken’s eccentric manner of speaking to lampoon a forgotten TV show from the 1950s, where the main character would try to seduce a woman (played directly into the camera) in a rather creepy fashion. Plus, let’s not forget that Walken’s speech patterns are so famous, that it resulted in a Walken family reunion sketch where pretty much ever member of the cast at the time got to try on a Walken impression, no matter how bad it was. Walken also got big laughs with Ed Glosser, Trivial Psychic and a certain gardener who has put googly eyes on his plants to keep from being scared of them.

But let’s be honest, the heavy-hitters are the famously inappropriate Colonel Angus, with some impressively dirty wordplay somehow fit for network television, and the often-quoted “Behind the Music” take on Blue Oyster Cult (seen above) that gave us the glorious line, “I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.”

Sadly, Walken hasn’t hosted since 2008, but we hope he comes back before it’s too late.

Even though it’s been over a decade since John Goodman hosted “SNL,” the “Roseanne” star’s long history with the series is more than enough to get him a high spot on this list. After all, there’s only one man who was deemed worthy enough to step into the space once occupied by John Belushi as one of the Blues Brothers, and that man is John Goodman. Regardless of how you feel about “Blues Brothers 2000,” that’s not an easy gig, and being part of that musical group requires much more than comedic chops. 

But aside from that, Goodman has a decorated past on the late night sketch series that stretches back to 1989, and his tenure includes funny and memorable impressions of the likes of the diabetes-afflicted Wilford Brimley (seen above), the headline-making White House employee and Monica Lewinsky confidante Linda Tripp, a heftier version of Robert De Niro on “The Joe Pesci Show,” and politician Rex Tillerson. But Goodman’s best sketches find him playing a variety of characters, ranging from one of the many men who love the legendary Bill Brasky to one of the Chicago sports superfans who rooted for “Da Bears” and “Da Bulls.” More recently, Goodman played a Drunker Uncle alongside Bobby Moynihan’s inebriated character on Weekend Update and shared a gross last call with Kate McKinnon.

Goodman has been very busy with movies and the “Roseanne” sequel series “The Conners” in recent years, but hopefully he’ll make it back to “SNL” for another hosting stint sometime soon.

Tom Hanks is an American treasure, and it’s a bit unfair that the guy is both a spectacular, acclaimed dramatic actor, as well as an accomplished comedy star. But even more impressive is just how good the Oscar-winning actor is at live sketch comedy. With plenty of TV experience from his early work on “Bosom Buddies,” Hanks knows his way around performing in front of a live audience, and neither the cue cards nor the fast-paced environment of “SNL” seem to throw him off. 

Though Hanks has hosted less frequently over the past couple decades, at least when compared to the ’80s and ’90s, the “Forrest Gump” star is such a beloved host of “SNL” that he’s regularly brought back as a guest star, especially whenever a new host is inducted into the exclusive Five Timers Club, which Hanks has been part of since 1990. More recently, Hanks has found “SNL” greatness with the likes of the Halloween hit David S. Pumpkins, a deadly theme park animatronic group of barbershop singers with Bruno Mars, and one of the best renditions of “Black Jeopardy” that the show has ever done. But in the past, he’s also made fun of himself on “Celebrity Jeopardy,” delivered some hilarious “Big” outtakes (watch above), and unsuccessfully flirted with women alongside Jon Lovitz. 

There’s a reason Hanks is one of the most beloved actors in Hollywood, and the many times he’s hosted “SNL” are definitely a significant part of that legacy.

Coming in just under the top spot, we have the actor who currently holds the record for hosting “Saturday Night Live” the most times. “Beetlejuice” and “30 Rock” star Alec Baldwin has hosted “SNL” a whopping 17 times, with his most recent stint being back in 2017. It’s very likely that he would have hosted the show multiple times in the years since then, but Baldwin was already spending extra time at Studio 8H between October 2016 and November 2020, because he became a regular guest star brought in to play President Donald Trump. 

The fact that Baldwin was beloved enough at the show to land a pivotal guest star role for several years should be enough to make him a historical host, but he’s also appeared in some of the show’s most memorable sketches. From the famous “Schweddy Balls” bit in the recurring “Delicious Dish” segment of NPR with Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer (above) to the unsettling, darkly hilarious “Canteen Boy” with a defenseless Adam Sandler as a boy scot in the middle of the woods with Baldwin’s inappropriately overbearing scout master, not to mention a simple but fantastic Robert De Niro impression in Jim Breuer’s “Joe Pesci Show,” the ’90s is full of Baldwin greatness. But we also get stellar impressions of Tony Bennett and Charles Nelson Reilly later in Baldwin’s “SNL” career, and there’s another holiday classic in the form of a “Glengarry Glen Ross” parody that allowed him to recreate a North Pole version of his most famous movie monologue.

Though Baldwin may have gotten himself in hot water a couple times in recent years, his greatness on “SNL” cannot be denied.

Do we really need to justify why Steve Martin is in the #1 spot on this list? Martin has been hosting “SNL” since the show’s second season, starting back in October 1976, when he was one of the best stand-up comedians in the business. Martin was selling out venues all over the country, and this was several years before he’d debut on the big screen in “The Jerk.” In those early years, Martin hosted “SNL” a whopping five years in a row, something no other host has done. In 1978 alone, he hosted a total of three times, including twice in the same season. He’s been such a consistent presence at “SNL” that many often wrongly assume that he was once a cast member. But frequency alone does not a great host make.

Throughout the past five decades, Steve Martin has proven to be popular across multiple generations, something that is extremely rare among hosts who have returned over and over again. Some of his best sketches range from the likes of King Tut and the recurring Two Wild and Crazy Guys with Dan Aykroyd to classic holiday bits, like his thoroughly thought-out holiday wish and a musical opening monologue about not phoning it in with the entire “SNL” cast of 1991. Of course, Martin has also been a staple of the recurring Five Timers Club sketches, from Justin Timberlake’s induction to Alec Baldwin’s platinum status. Let’s not forget that Steve Martin is also a treat when paired with Martin Short as co-hosts, giving us a recent spin on “A Christmas Carol.”

Basically, whenever Steve Martin shows up on “SNL,” you know it’s going to be something special, even if it’s just a guest appearance. He’s a comedy legend who has blended in seamlessly with pretty much every iteration of the “SNL” cast, and that’s what makes him the best.