About Me
Edward Regan Murphy was born in the Bushwick projects of Brooklyn, New York, on the 3rd of April, 1961. His father was a policeman. His mother, Lillian, was a telephone operator. Sadly, they divorced when Eddie was 3 and, even more sadly, his father was killed by a new girlfriend when the boy was just 8. Living with Lillian and his brother Charles Q Murphy (now an actor and screenwriter), Eddie stayed in Brooklyn till he was ten. Then Lillian, along with her new husband Vernon Lynch (a former boxer then employed as a foreman at Breyers Ice Cream plant)) took the boys, plus Lynch's son (also named Vernon), to Roosevelt, Long Island. This was a predominantly white, middle-class area thats black population increased sharply throughout the Sixties and Seventies. It also spawned Howard Stern, Julius Erving and Public Enemy rapper Chuck D.His comedy launched him on a recording career. In 1982, there was Eddie Murphy, an album recorded live at the Comic Strip. The next year there was another, Eddie Murphy, Comedian, that won a Grammy as Best Comedy LP. He'd already been nominated for the hit single Boogie In Your Butt - he was, after all, a musician too. In 1985, he'd release the How Could It Be album, produced by Rick James and Stevie Wonder (Murphy also did a spectacular Stevie). This delivered a million-selling single in Party All The Time, and was followed by 1989's So Happy, helmed by Nile Rogers and Cameo's Larry Blackmon. 1993 would bring Love's Alright, featuring collaborations with both Michael Jackson and Shabba Ranks.One sight of Murphy on the big screen and you knew he'd make it. Wrapped in shades and headphones and shrieking out a wince-making version of Roxanne, he was immediately in your face. Then, wisecracking like crazy, going head-to-head with Nolte, and subduing and taunting a bar full of disapproving whites, he proceeded to steal the show. Now, aside from two brilliant comedy videos - Delirious and Raw - it was films all the way. First came the smart comedy Trading Places, with Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis, then his first headlining role, in Beverly Hills Cop. As renegade detective Axl Foley (a part originally intended for Sylvester Stallone), he went down a storm, with the movie becoming one of the Top 10 grossers of all time.2002 saw Eddie in Showtime, playing a maverick rookie cop who has to team up with hard-bitten veteran Robert De Niro in a reality-based TV cop show, produced by Rene Russo. It was an above-average comedy, not unakin to 48 Hrs. After this came The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, where a clubowner in outer space battles the intergalactic Mob. Then there was I Spy, based on the Sixties TV show, where Eddie played a boxer helping the US government recover a missing jet (Owen Wilson, Famke Janssen and Malcolm McDowell co-starred). And there was yet more comedy in Shrek 2 (with Murphy handed a much bigger part after his success in the original) and The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans, a man hugely influenced by Murphy.With hits guaranteed for the next two years, and having received $20 million each for the Nutty Professor and Dr Dolittle sequels, Murphy can perhaps try again for that empire. He does give money away - to the AIDS Foundation, the Martin Luther King Jr Centre, various cancer charities, he donated $100,000 to the Screen Actors' Guild's strike relief fund - but he reinvests heavily in his own organisations. Having been burned so badly in the Eighties, he likes to surround himself with people he can trust too. His cousin Ray looks after him, his childhood friend Clint Smith is VP of his TV company, while Lillian and Vernon help out with Panda Merchandising, which controls the rights to Eddie's products. What he needs most though, is a screenwriter he can trust. That way, and only that way, can this most gifted of performers shine for many a year to come.
