Why Eddie Murphy got rid of his most iconic asset: “I forced myself to stop”
Some of the best actors in the business are known for certain trademarks. An impression of Jim Carrey can be achieved with a certain contortion of the face, while you can point out Jennifer Coolidge’s voice in an instant. Having a recognisable trait can take actors far, often helping them to become widely known by the general public. Yet, it can also be a hindrance, resulting in type-casting or people only knowing you for a certain quality, something Eddie Murphy has always been keen to avoid.
The actor cut his teeth in comedy in the late 1970s when he was hardly an adult, before becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member in the early 1980s. Murphy was soon the star of various movies, particularly the buddy cop kind, making his debut with 48 Hrs. It was 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop which really allowed him to become a star, however, with the movie earning him significant praise from critics and fans.
Murphy continued to lead many popular movies, branching further into rather ridiculous realms of comedy with Dr. Dolittle, The Nutty Professor, and eventually Norbit. While he has had some genuine critical successes with movies like Dreamgirls and Shrek, the actor is largely known for his out-there comedies that typically fare less-than-favourably with critics.
Despite his reputation as a comedic actor, there was one humorous quality that he decided to change about himself early in his career, worried that it would affect the way people would view him. Talking to CBR, he revealed, “In the ’80s, I was like, ‘I don’t want to be known for a laugh.” Explaining that people often resorted to emulating his iconic laugh when doing an impression of him, Murphy found that he had to do something about it.
“That’s all they did was that laugh… It was like, ‘Hey, you know what, I’m going to stop laughing.’ I forced myself to stop laughing, which is really an unnatural thing. You laugh, and it’s like, ‘I have to stop laughing like that.’ And now I don’t laugh like that anymore.”
Murphy wants to be known for more than just his laugh and his comedic roles, which are, at the end of the day, just characters. Yet, Hollywood is the kind of business that simply doesn’t allow for that kind of freedom – if you do something memorable, the whole world will likely remind you.
“The impressions, and just… we’re making too much of it. Even still! If you say do an impression, they’ll do that laugh. They’ll talk like me, and they’ll talk like the Donkey [from Shrek]. If you say, do Eddie Murphy, They talk, ‘Hey, how you doing! [his signature laugh]’ And it’s like, that’s not me.”
In another interview, this time with Cinema Blend, the actor discussed how “that’s a strange thing as a human being to have to adjust something as natural as that, where you go through ‘I can’t laugh like that because people always look and say, ‘Oh, that’s it.’” Clearly, someone seemingly as confident as Murphy can still have insecurities, but it’s a shame that he felt the need to change his iconic laugh.
