EDDIE MURPHY REVEALS CELEB THAT INVITED HIM FOR THREESOME - AND MEL B UPDATE

Eddie Murphy is celebrating forty years as a Hollywood leading man with the return of his most famous screen character - Detective Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.

Murphy has stayed at the top of Tinseltown for that long thanks to brilliant performances, smart business moves and “not stressing” too much, thinks the A-lister.

His wit and screen energy in hits like The Nutty Professor and Shrek franchises, and brilliance in moving roles like Dreamgirls and Dolemite have made him a screen giant.

Incredibly, he has expertly manoeuvred his way through scandals and controversies, which would have derailed other A-listers.

After being stopped by police with a transgender prostitute in his car in LA at 4am in 1997, he insisted that his actions were not illegal but simply those of a “good Samaritan.”

The 63-year-old initially denied being Spice Girl Mel B’s baby daddy to daughter Angel after she fell pregnant and publicly demanded a DNA test in April 2007.

But the pair reconciled in 2016, and are now said to have a good relationship.

He found himself criticised over the homophobic language he’d used in ‘80s standup routines but later apologised without fallout.

He also navigated a disastrous fortnight-long marriage with model Tracey E Edmonds and recovered from his shock 2010s run of movie flops.

The actor and director says he adopts a similar laid-back approach to that of his BHC character Axel Foley, admitting that he’s settled down now as a grandfather to one and father to ten.

Asked if it took him “a while to learn that?”, he replied: “Yeah, I didn’t just walk out of heaven into Hollywood. I went through some s*** to get to that place. It takes a minute, that’s what I learned.”

While others would be derailed by those past troubles and trappings of fame, he never let it impact him.

”I always dealt with stressful things really well and had the least amount of stress,” added Eddie.

“I have aged. I think the only thing I can say that I don’t do that most people do, is you can count the drinks I’ve had in my life on two hands. I don’t mind not drinking. Everything else I do the same as everyone else.”

The Oscar nominee joked that the public still likes to remind him of his reputation.

“People see me and they’ll be like, ‘You really got 10 kids?’,” he said.

“It is different with men and women. Men look at me and be like ‘This n*****’s crazy.’

“With women, it’s like, ‘wow, Eddie Murphy has been doing some serious f**king, he must be f**king, all the time. I know he did a song called Party All The Time; he should do F**king All the Time...I wonder if that’s what that song was about?’”

The star says he embraces his success by being relaxed about “people wanting selfies”, and knowing family rather than his career or fame has been the key to longevity.

He points to tragic late pals Prince and Michael Jackson, who were consumed by their work and unable to enjoy their success.

“My contemporaries, people that came on the scene when I did or really had an impact, most of them are dead like Michael, Prince and Whitney.

“Without getting into the logistics of why they’re gone, what they all had in common was their careers were all-consuming.

“I’ve learned that your career can’t be everything. Your career has to be what you do. But at the centre of it has to be family. The most important thing in my life is my family.

“I feel like if I put my family and my kids first, and with any decisions I make, I do the right thing, it always comes out right.

“Your endeavours, that’s what you do and that’s how you keep the lights on but it can’t be everything. It can’t be at the centre. At the centre has to be family.”

He laughs that his younger self’s certainty of becoming famous was sprinkled with innocent joy, but now he sees “no f***ing magic” in life in the limelight.

“I used to think it [fame] was mad. I always knew when I was around 13, or 14, I was going to be famous, and I still believed in magic.

“As you get older, it’s like, hey [this] ain’t no f***ing magic.

Speaking to LA students, he admits he took becoming the biggest movie star of summer 1984, at the tender age of 22 “for granted.”

He added: “Now I look back on it and think that’s a trip.

“When I first blew up, all those old actors and actresses from the golden age of Hollywood, they were still around and were curious about me.

“My first movie, 48 Hours, Marlon Brando called up my agent to arrange dinner with me, when I was 21. Back then I was just thinking, ‘Hey, you’re Brando.’ Now I’m like, ‘What the f*** - that is the greatest actor ever’. He didn’t want to talk about the Godfather!”

Eddie switches off from movies with music and loves to record tracks as a hobby.

While he has enough material to release an album, he prefers to keep it for his pleasure only.

“That’s actually what I do most is music. I record stuff and I write and I play a little bit and I’ve been doing it for years and years and years. That’s what I do for free. That’s what I do for me,” added Eddie.

“I have lots of stuff. I record, I never stopped recording. I just stopped putting stuff out.

“I had a studio at the house up until last year when I let my daughter move back in.”

He finds it “surreal” to be back as Foley after three decades of failing to find the right script to make a fourth film.

Speaking on US television, he noted: “For 30 years we had hesitancy, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to play the role, it was because I didn’t want to do another soft one.

“I was hesitant until we found the right thing and the script came together, then I was all in.”

He wanted to get the fourth one just right, admitting that “the third one was kind of soft,”.

“The first two Beverly Cops work, then we were like, ‘Hey if we’re going to do another one, this sh** got to be right.’”

He’s proud to come full circle given that Murphy was one of Hollywood’s first black action stars, with the first film being the highest-grossing movie of 1984.

He said: “Axel is the most important role I have played because it opened up the whole [of Hollywood].

“Before Beverly Hills Cop, there had never been a movie which starred a black person that was successful all around the world - people still call me Axel internationally.

“Between Beverly Hills Cop, Coming To America and The Nutty Professor, I have movies that have worked around the world.

“Now you have Will [Smith] and the Rock, but Beverly Hills Cop was the first one that did it.”

Eddie has changed too, he reflects, adding “I was just a normal 21-year-old, didn’t have kids and just had a few life experiences.

“Now I’m a grandpa with 10 kids, a granddaughter, and a whole universe between Axel Foley then and Axel Foley now. So much has changed and it’s age-appropriate. “The character in this movie is different from that Axel.

“He’s been through one marriage and he’s estranged from his daughter. This guy is more mature, I think, than the old Axel.

”Axel is not Superman. He’s an every man, he’s relatable. Axel’s the kind of a dude you want to hang out with.”

Netflix, which releases Axel F on July 3, is already planning to make a fifth flick, and Murphy has no plans to retire.

He said: “I could see myself doing a Broadway live show that was more than standup.

“It would have to be music, retrospective storytelling and some standup.”

He also wants to remake the cult comedy 1960s film ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’.

Eddie’s popularity was on show at his star-studded premiere of the new film recently.

But he admits there are only two stars who’ve left him starstruck - and one who shocked him with their naughtiness

He said: “I met Muhammad Ali and I had red shoes on and he’s coming down an escalator and I’m going ‘Ahh!’. He looks at me and says ‘Them some fat fly shoes you got on.’

“When I met Paul McCartney, I asked him to do this record. I saw him in the studio at his house and it was surreal sitting with one of The Beatles. He had all the equipment that they recorded the Beatles' music on.

“He had this harpsichord type piano thing and he started playing Strawberry Fields And when he played the actual (line), he said, ‘Hey, remember this?’, I was like ‘Arghh’.

‘I went out to dinner with him once and don’t even remember anything. I was just totally fanned out. I don’t remember any part of the night.”

His most controversial celebrity interaction came with The King And I star and his wife in the early 80s.

“I met Yul Brynner at Studio 54. Years later, I realised he was trying to pick me up, while he was with his wife and I was 21 years old.

“Yul was like, ‘Would you like to come back with my wife and me and party?’ And I was like, ‘What? We are partying right here?’ and then I didn’t go.

“Years later I realised, I was like, ‘Oh, he meant ‘Come partying,’ and now I wish I had gone.

“It’s such a better story if I had gone and had a threesome with him and his wife.”

*Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F will be released on Netflix on July 3.

2024-07-01T16:23:08Z dg43tfdfdgfd