Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy’s screen presence has always run on momentum: quick thinking, verbal precision and the sense that a scene might change direction the moment he enters it. Born Edward Regan Murphy in Brooklyn on April 3, 1961, he began pursuing comedy as a teenager after hearing Richard Pryor’s album That Nigger’s Crazy. Murphy marks a 1976 talent-show performance at the Roosevelt Youth Center as the beginning of his career. National attention arrived through Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s. Characters including Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson and his cheerfully combative version of Gumby showed how readily he could build distinct personalities from voice, posture and attitude. That ability to shift character without losing his own comic rhythm became a defining part of his film work. Murphy made his big-screen debut opposite Nick Nolte in 48 Hrs. in 1982, then followed it with Trading Places and his first solo leading role, Beverly Hills Cop. As Axel Foley, he found an ideal vehicle for his particular energy: relaxed, disruptive and usually several steps ahead of everyone else. Coming to America expanded his taste for playing multiple characters, while Harlem Nights placed him behind the camera as director, producer and co-writer as well as star. His career later opened into family films and voice work, including Mulan, Dr. Dolittle and the Shrek series, in which he voiced Donkey. The role made full use of a performer whose voice alone can supply pace, personality and comic friction. Murphy also showed a more dramatic edge as soul singer James “Thunder” Early in Dreamgirls, winning a Golden Globe and receiving an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor. Dolemite Is My Name brought him the role of comedian and filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore in 2019, the same year Murphy returned to host Saturday Night Live for the first time since 1984. The appearance earned him a Primetime Emmy. In 2024, he returned once more as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F—a fitting reminder of how naturally Murphy can reconnect with a character while still supplying the spark that made the role work in the first place.