Eddie Murphy

Edward Regan Murphy, born April 3, 1961, in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Roosevelt, Long Island, is one of the most commercially successful entertainers in the history of American cinema and one of the most influential stand-up comedians of the 20th century, a performer of explosive natural charisma, vocal elasticity, and physical comedy genius who transformed Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s and then dominated Hollywood throughout the decade in a way no African American comedian had ever done before. Growing up in a single-parent household in Roosevelt, Long Island, after his father Charles, a transit police officer, was stabbed and killed when Eddie was eight, and raised by his mother Lillian with ten siblings, Murphy found in comedy both escape and power, performing impressions and jokes in his bedroom for classmates and neighborhood kids with the instinctive timing of a natural entertainer. He began performing at stand-up clubs on Long Island at fifteen, winning amateur competitions and developing his style before being cast on Saturday Night Live at nineteen, where his performances from 1980-1984 — as Buckwheat, Velvet Jones, James Brown, and his own explosive stand-up-style commentaries — are still regarded as among the most electrifying in the show's fifty-year history. His HBO stand-up specials Delirious (1983) and Raw (1987) remain benchmarks of stand-up comedy for their fearlessness and technical mastery. His film career produced Beverly Hills Cop (1984, one of the most profitable films in Hollywood history relative to budget), Coming to America (1988), Trading Places (1983), The Nutty Professor (1996), Mulan (1998), Shrek franchise (2001 onward), Dreamgirls (2006, Oscar nomination), and Coming 2 America (2021). He received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2015.