Eddie Murphy has been entertaining the millions since the mid-seventies, but how much does he earn per movie?
Eddie Murphy earned around $250 million between the 1980s and the 2000s in movie salaries alone. His first large paycheck was a cool one million dollars, in 1984. As his career developed, his earnings would always be between ten and twenty-five million dollars per movie.
Read on to learn more about Eddie Murphy’s impressive career on the big stage.
Young And Funny
There are some who may not know that Eddie Murphy started his career in entertainment as a comedian. Inspired by the late Richard Pryor, Murphy began developing his on-stage charisma as early as childhood.
He would spend time imitating other successful actors. As time went on, he became further influenced by other prominent industry professionals. These included the likes of Bill Cosby and Robin Williams.
As he both studied and explored comedy as a potential career path, he took opportunities performing on stage. He’d attend stand-up comedy nights in his home city of New York, using comedy as an emotional outlet as well as a passion.
His father passed away when he was just eight years old but had left the family years earlier. Reportedly, his father was brutally murdered – stabbed to death by a woman. The event sent his mother into a sickness, and Eddie and his brother were relocated to foster care for a year.
Many years later, in 2001, Murphy would witness firsthand the death of his stepfather. Allegedly, he quite literally died in his arms. Following that, in 2017, Eddie’s brother, Charlie, died from leukemia. However, through all these struggles, Eddie Murphy has remained one of the industry’s most instantly recognizable funny men.
Over time, Murphy refined his comedy and became a hit among the crowds. In the early eighties, he recorded and released audio copies of stand-up specials. These were followed with a ‘concert film’, a compilation of sorts showing Murphy performing skits. This film was a massive triumph, grossing around fifty million dollars.
Bringing Home The Bacon
In 2012, Forbes released an article branding Eddie Murphy as the industry’s most overpaid actors. They insisted his “career had just collapsed”, and he was sorely overdue a return to form. They covered his recent ‘list of flops’, and pulled his career to pieces.
It can be argued that he certainly didn’t see much critical acclaim through the 2010s. However, his success throughout the nineties and noughties is more than tangible. As an actor, Murphy appeared in some memorable productions, such as Shrek and Doctor Dolittle.
He began earning massive paychecks following his first major production in 1984. He’d seen minor success on Saturday Night Live through the early eighties but started slow. In the beginning, he earned around $4,500 per episode. This climbed considerably to $30,000 per episode as his stature grew.
In the late eighties and early nineties, Murphy headlined a trilogy of films – Beverly Hills Cop. Today, these movies are cult classics, and they secured Murphy as a credible contender in the actor stakes. In the second iteration of the franchise, he earned almost ten million dollars. In the third, in 1994, this grew to a massive fifteen million.
And of course, that’s just one franchise. He’s also claimed lead roles in The Nutty Professor, Doctor Doolittle, and Tower Heist, among others. The latter is one of his newer, admittedly less successful movies, and still netted him almost eight million dollars.
In 2020, Murphy signed a huge deal with Netflix, with the goal of working on comedy specials. Furthermore, there was confirmation of a Beverly Hills Cop 4 being in the works. That film would mark a return to the franchise almost three decades after its last visit.
You can see a decades-old trailer for the first Beverly Hills Cop movie, on YouTube below.
Ultimately, Eddie Murphy’s movie earnings would see him secure for life – and then some. Not only does he boast a staggering bank account, but also a thirty million dollar Beverly Hills mansion, and a private island.
While he certainly had his fair share of struggles in life, it’s undoubtedly true that he’s also seen incredible success. And, as time goes on and Murphy appears in more movies, his net worth is only likely to climb ever higher.