Eddie Murphy, the legendary star of Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America, recently got candid and revealed that he only auditioned once in his entire life.
In the new two-part Apple TV+ documentary Number One on the Call Sheet, the 63-year-old American actor and comedian talked about his unusual career.
Murphy also quipped that he always believed he would be successful in his own head, saying, “Early on, I just knew I was going to be f*** I started when I’m around 16, I’m going, ‘I’m gonna be famous.’”
He admitted, “When I was 19, I got Saturday Night Live, and things just started happening. I didn’t go through all of the stuff that a lot of actors, I didn’t got through auditions.”
“I had one audition in my whole life. I think I’m the only actor that could say that. I had one audition. It was for Saturday Night Live,” The Nutty Professor alum added.
Murphy, who found success quickly, received advice from numerous famous people, as Sidney Poitier told him not to play Roots author Alex Haley in director Norman Jewison’s planned adaptation of Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Boxer Larry Holmes said, “Don’t forget where you came from,” while singer James Brown told him to stop cursing and to hide his money in the woods.
“And I said, ‘Why bury my money in the woods?’ He said, ‘The government will take it from you. So bury it.’ And I said, ‘But can’t the government take your land?’ And he said, ‘But they won’t know where the money is.’ That’s a true story. That’s the kind of advice I used to get,” the Norbit actor recalled.
“I was in uncharted waters. For Sidney and all those guys, when I showed up, it was something kind of new. They didn’t have a reference for me,” Eddie Murphy noted, talking about how hard it was for his Hollywood elders to give him helpful advice.
