Names and faces

Sheriff Tyrone Lewis in Hinds County, Miss., has a new reserve deputy: actor Dan Aykroyd. In a Friday afternoon ceremony, Lewis swore in Aykroyd as the newest addition to his department’s reserve squad.

Lewis said Aykroyd submitted a letter of request to join the reserve unit. Aykroyd is in Mississippi as part of the cast of Get On Up, a movie about soul singer James Brown. The Clarion-Ledger reported that Aykroyd said being a part of the department roster will give him a reason to go back to Mississippi. “My family fell in love with this state on the last trip down here,” he said, adding that his wife is from Tennessee and Virginia and feels a Southern kinship with Mississippians. His daughter, a correspondent on Bluesmobile Radio, has been all over the state interviewing its residents. Aykroyd also said he wants to work to bring more attention to the needs of law enforcement agencies. “A lot of departments can’t even afford ammunition for practice; it’s that kind of tiny little challenge that you never think of,” he said.

Award-winning actor William H. Macy premiered his first feature-directing effort at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, where he received a standing ovation from the capacity crowd. “One of the many gifts that have come to me from directing … is that I’ve fallen in love with this business all over again,” the 63-year-old said before his film’s world premiere. Rudderless, which Macy helped write, tells the story of a father who discovers and performs his son’s original songs after the college student dies in a campus shooting. Billy Crudup, Anton Yelchin and Macy’s wife, Felicity Huffman, star in the drama that screened as the festival’s closing-night film. Co-writers Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison, both new dads, said they “wanted to write a story that could be an example of unconditional parental love.”