Eddie Murphy reflects on 50 years, trauma and triumph in Hollywood

Actor and comedian Eddie Murphy opened up about his 50-year career and how his life has changed with time.

Eddie said, “My most important blessing is that I love myself,” the legendary comedian and movie star said in an interview.

“I’ve always loved myself, always been my biggest fan. That’s at the core of all of the decisions that you make. Some people go through their whole lives and get to the end and say, ‘I finally love myself.’ I started out that way.”

Next year marks the somewhat reclusive icon’s 50th year in show business, “In a business where people come and go, most people don’t get 50 years,” he said.

Murphy first broke through in the 1980s as a young standout in stand-up and on Saturday Night Live, before kicking off a string of early box office successes, including 48 hrs, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop. The ensuing decades brought more hits, including The Nutty Professor, Dreamgirls, and Shrek, as well as a few flops, such as The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

Talking about his latest Netflix documentary, Being Eddie, he noted, “Being Eddie is a great thing,” he said. “It’s just a unique life that I’ve had. I’m sure it affected me a bunch of different ways,” he said of losing the man he had seen fighting with his mom from his earliest days. “There was a lot of trauma, and we’re shaped by that stuff.”

His mother remarried, to Vernon Lynch Sr., someone Murphy says filled a vital void, “By the grace of God, my mother married an amazing, solid man who put all the rights—- in me. That’s crucial. It makes a huge difference.”

Murphy’s also multifaceted; he’s one of the few Hollywood actors to convincingly play multiple characters in the same film, as seen in Coming to America and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he received an Oscar nod for his supporting role in Dreamgirls, and he again found critical acclaim with 2019’s Dolemite Is My Name, about real-life comedian Rudy Ray Moore.

Murphy and his first wife, Nicole, with whom he shares five adult children, divorced in 2006 after 13 years of marriage. He has welcomed three children from other relationships and two more with Paige Butcher. “It just happened,” he said, adding, “I never knew I would have 10 kids, but now it’s the best thing ever. If you can afford that many kids, you should have as many kids as you can afford. That is fun.” But most important, he points out, “my children are all decent people. I don’t have one rotten one, and I would like to think that they got some of that from me.”