Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy is an actor, born 1961.
Eddie Murphy was a nineteen-year-old stand-up when Saturday Night Live hired him in 1980, and within two seasons he was the reason people watched. The film career started immediately and at speed: 48 Hrs. (1982), Trading Places (1983) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984) established a screen persona that had not existed before, a fast, delighted troublemaker who is always the smartest person in a room full of authority figures and visibly enjoys proving it.
The stand-up specials Delirious (1983) and Raw (1987) ran alongside, and they are the harder, more confrontational version of the same act. Then came Coming to America (1988), where he played several parts under heavy makeup as a tribute to Peter Sellers, and the technique became a habit: The Nutty Professor (1996) and Norbit (2007) both put him under prosthetics playing whole families.
The 1990s and 2000s are uneven and the misses are famous. What rescued the reputation was work in which he stopped performing charm: Kit Ramsey in Bowfinger (1999), the ruined soul singer in Dreamgirls (2006), which won him a Golden Globe and brought an Academy Award nomination, and Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite Is My Name (2019), an affectionate portrait of a hustler who cannot be talked out of his own idea.
Two younger generations know him mainly as Donkey in the Shrek films and Mushu in Mulan. He received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2015, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2023 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2026, which is the industry finally admitting what the 1980s box office already knew.
Movies (65)
- Shrek (2001)
- Shrek 2 (2004)
- Trading Places (1983)
- Mulan (1998)
- Shrek Forever After (2010)
- Shrek the Third (2007)
- Norbit (2007)
- Coming to America (1988)
- Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
- Shrek 5 (2027)
- The Pickup (2025)
- Doctor Dolittle (1998)
- Life (1999)
- 48 Hrs. (1982)
- Beverly Hills Cop II (1987)
- Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024)
- The Nutty Professor (1996)
- I Spy (2002)
- Daddy Day Care (2003)
- Bowfinger (1999)
- Coming 2 America (2021)
- Tower Heist (2011)
- Shrek the Halls (2007)
- The Golden Child (1986)
- Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)
- Meet Dave (2008)
- The Haunted Mansion (2003)
- Mr. Church (2016)
- A Thousand Words (2012)
- Boomerang (1992)
TV (10)
Where to start with Eddie Murphy
The best film he is in is also the best introduction. Trading Places writes the con man as a genuine comic lead rather than a sidekick, inside a satire that still has teeth, and Beverly Hills Cop follows it well as a thriller rebuilt around one improviser's timing.
Coming to America is the crowd favourite and the first outing for the multiple-role gimmick, done here with real affection. For the stand-up, Eddie Murphy Raw shows the act at its most aggressive and most assured. Bowfinger is the underrated one, with two completely different performances in the same film, and Dolemite Is My Name is the late-career high, generous and unexpectedly sweet. Dreamgirls is where he plays it straight and proves he always could. Shrek raised a generation and holds up better than its sequels.
The eighties run
Roughly six years in which he was the most bankable person in American film, and the films still move faster than almost anything made since. Trading Places and Beverly Hills Cop are the two to start with.
The Shrek films
Donkey is arguably the most widely heard comic performance of the last thirty years, and he plays it as a man who cannot tolerate silence. The first two are the good ones and the specials are for completists.
Playing every part himself
The prosthetic-heavy films where he takes four, seven or eight roles in a single picture. The Nutty Professor is the one that justifies the whole habit, and Bowfinger is the funniest use of the split.
The stand-up and the late resurgence
Delirious and Raw are the specials that made him famous before any film did, and Dolemite Is My Name is the 2019 performance that reminded everyone the range was never gone.
Eddie Murphy on CrossBinge
- Companion guide: Buddy Cop: The Complete Guide to Mismatched Partners