See Your Favorite 'Saturday Night Live' Stars in the Ultimate Flashback

By Meredith B. Kile 9:30 PM PST, February 12, 2015

To celebrate Saturday Night Live's 40th anniversary, ET dug into the vault to find our most memorable behind-the-scenes moments from SNL. Check out all your favorite castmembers bringing the funny in our ultimate flashback!

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"[I’ve been] working for this my whole life," Chris Rock told ET back in 1990. "It wasn’t like I was driving a bus and someone tapped me and was like 'Hey, you wanna be on Saturday Night Live?'"

Original castmembers Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi sat down in 1981 to marvel at the show's continued success less than a decade into the late-night sketch show’s storied run.

"Eighteen million people still watch something we started," Aykroyd said, but Belushi recalled that the show’s ratings weren’t always so great.

"You have to remember we weren’t a hit when we started," the late comedy icon told ET. "Then every time we started a new season, they said it wasn’t as good as last year."

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Cast members in years since the original "Not Ready for Primetime Players" also copped to the pressures of comparing yourself to past SNL stars and seasons.

"You don’t have time to think about that," Dennis Miller admitted in 1990. "It’s your time to either ascend or descend quickly."

The show's most successful stars all have the same secret to SNL success: hard work and long hours.

"When the show’s in season, I stay in the office like 12 hours [a day]," Eddie Murphy told ET in 1982.

"Sometimes you have to eat just to stay awake," joked Tina Fey in 2008.

WATCH: Secrets to 'Saturday Night Live's' Unparalleled Success, As Told by Lorne Michaels in 1985

Check out the clip to see SNL favorites like Billy Crystal, John Lovitz and Dana Carvey perform their characters' catchphrases in rapid fire and see a 1985 flashback interview with the SNL creator Lorne Michaels in the video below.