FILM ACTOR
Eddie Murphy
Since Winning the EMMA Award
Eddie Murphy is an American Actor, Comedian, and Singer who went on to star in other mainstream films, including Imagine That, Tower Heist, A Thousand Words, and Mr. Church. He also continued to lend his voice to the Shrek films as Donkey. In 2007, he earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Dreamgirls.
In 2015, Eddie received the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humour. As a host, he returned to Saturday Night Live in 2019 and won an Emmy Award for Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. In 2021, he starred in the sequel to Coming to America, Coming 2 America, and was given the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which is the Golden Globes’ Lifetime Achievement Award, in 2023.
In 2024, he reprised his role as the Detroit detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. Murphy is one of the most commercially successful African American actors in the entertainment industry and one of the industry’s top five box-office performers overall. He is a modern pioneer for Black comedy actors and has made an everlasting contribution to Black history.
Background (Before 2001)
Born in Brooklyn, New York City and raised in the borough’s Bushwick neighborhood, Eddie Murphy became a dominant comedic figure in the United States during the 1980s. Eddie began performing stand-up comedy in New York City as a teenager. He was only 19 when he joined the cast of the long-running TV show Saturday Night Live in 1980.
He quickly emerged as the show’s top performer, and he left in 1984 to focus on his film and stand-up career. Some of his earlier well-known films include 1982’s 48 HRS, 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop, 1993’s Trading Places, 1996’s Coming to America, 1998’s Mulan and 2001’s Shrek.
Eddie also has released three studio albums, including 1985’s How Could It Be, 1989’s So Happy, and 1993’s Love’s Alright. His 1985 single “Party All the Time” peaked at No.2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
