The movie that saw Eddie Murphy hit rock bottom: “I was on the fast lane to ex-stardom”
Realistically, there was no way Eddie Murphy would ever be able to maintain the success he experienced at the start of his movie career, because there are few actors who ever have.
Thanks to his incendiary stand-up comedy routines and presence on Saturday Night Live, Murphy wasn’t exactly an unknown when he made his feature debut in 1982’s 48 Hrs, but Walter Hill’s action thriller laid the groundwork for the buddy cop comedy and soared at the box office, sending him stratospheric.
It’s a perilous position for any performer to find themselves in, never mind one who was barely in their 20s when the film was released. Murphy was suddenly one of Hollywood’s biggest and most bankable stars, and as the hits kept coming, the pressure continued to grow.
For a while, he seemed to embrace it. Audiences were guaranteed to show up for anything the fast-talking and endlessly charismatic Murphy lent his name to, but nobody can keep up those levels forever. When the first disappointment came, the dominoes began tumbling, leaving him on the cusp of an existential crisis.
Harlem Nights was the first major knock to Murphy’s confidence, and he admitted that he should never have served as the leading man, screenwriter, executive producer, and director. The period-set comedy still made money, though, just not as much as he’d become accustomed to.
Seeking an easy win, a fat paycheque convinced him that the easiest way to rebound from his first-ever underperforming picture was to embrace the familiar. Murphy wanted to right his perceived wrong as quickly as possible and restore himself to the mountaintop of profitability, and while it worked, it left him sinking even deeper into a pit of despair.
Eight years after the original, Murphy and Nick Nolte reunited for Another 48 Hrs. The studio was definitely happy with the result, seeing as it earned over twice as much from cinemas as its predecessor and added another unqualified hit to the star’s filmography, but critics weren’t so kind.
Rehashing the formula led to a drubbing, with reviews eviscerating a formulaic, uninspired, and obvious cash-grab sequel. Murphy was in no position to argue when he admitted the only reason he’d made the film was because Harlem Nights had fallen short of his usual standards and he needed a guaranteed winner, but that wasn’t the only thing that left him at rock bottom.
“I had made it, and I was depressed at how I looked in that film,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I was fat, and then an article I read in Time magazine said I was on the fast lane to ex-stardom. That really went to the bone more than being fat. I knew I was unhappy, but if someone else could tell that I was unhappy, I decided I had to stop until I found something that I was passionate about.”
Murphy pledged that he’d no longer be motivated by money and the prospect of retaining his crown as the king of the box office, and he stuck to those guns for a while. However, after Boomerang and The Distinguished Gentleman weren’t as widely embraced as he’d hoped, he reverted to type by starring in Beverly Hills Cop III: another surefire hit that he only made for the money and hated every second of.
