What is Eddie Murphys Worth?

Eddie Murphy is a legendary comedian, actor, and director who has changed the way the film industry sees comedians.

While he may be best known for his series such as Coming to America and Beverly Hills Cop, Murphy has held nearly every job in the film industry and has made a fortune from his works.

Although he may have had an incredibly troubling childhood, the tragedies of his life have taught Eddie Murphy the importance of joy and laughter.

What Is Eddie Murphy’s Net Worth?

Eddie Murphy has a net worth of $200 million, which he has earned from multiple high-priced roles and movie deals that he’s been making since the 1990s.

Murphy had to struggle early on in his life to get to the point that he’s at today.

Eddie Murphy was born on April 3rd of 1961 in Brooklyn, New York.

His mother was a telephone operator, and his father worked as both a transit cop and an amateur comedian.

His parents’ marriage didn’t last long, and they were divorced when Murphy and his brother were small children.

Murphy’s time with his father was cut short when he was only eight years old after his father was murdered by his girlfriend.

Murphy’s mother became incredibly ill shortly after the death of his father, and the boys were sent to foster care while she tried to recover.

Luckily, his mother was able to recover from her illness and even got married, allowing the boys to be back home with their mother.

To help cope with what had happened to him as a child, Eddie Murphy fell deeply in love with comedy.

When he was introduced to Richard Pryor as a young teenager, he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

While attending Roosevelt Junior-Senior High School, Murphy would perform stand-up in front of his fellow students.

He would often give impromptu performances in the auditorium, helping him get voted Most Popular Student of his class.

One of the biggest performances that Eddie Murphy gave as a teenager was when he did an impression of singer Al Green at the Roosevelt Youth Center.

In this performance, Murphy was able to show off his impersonation skills along with his stand-up and musical talent.

These performances were only the beginning of his comedic career.

Bringing Saturday Night Live Back To Popularity

At only 19 years old, Eddie Murphy joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1980.

Only five years after the show’s launch, it had been seeing one of its first low points and producers were scrambling to find what the show needed.

The show was looking for a slew of new cast members during the 1980s, but Eddie Murphy wasn’t originally on their list of candidates.

He was able to weasel his way into the show by calling the talent coordinator daily, begging the coordinator to let him on the show so he could support 18 siblings.

Eventually, the talent coordinator allowed Murphy to audition, and he proceeded to blow them away with his talent, which led to them hiring him.

At first, Murphy had to fight for screen time because the writers simply didn’t write roles for him.

Saturday Night Live was being threatened with cancellation when Murphy first appeared on the show, but ratings began to immediately skyrocket after the show introduced the world to one of the newest hit comedians.

The first speaking role that Murphy was given on the show was the student basketball player Raheem Adbul Muhammed.

Although the role was small, it was more than enough to get fans of the show talking about him and questioning why they didn’t get to see Murphy more.

Over the course of his career with Saturday Night Live, Murphy began to appear in nearly every skit the show had to offer.

This caused major tensions between him and some of his fellow cast members, such as Joe Piscopo and Charles Rocket.

By his final season on Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy had started hating his time on the show.

Between all of the intentional drama caused by the production team, Murphy knew that his time on the sketch comedy show was over.

Transitioning Into Film

As if keeping up with his Saturday Night Live schedule weren’t enough, Eddie Murphy was filming multiple movies while still being a featured cast member of the comedy show.

The first movie Murphy ever appeared in was 48 Hrs. alongside Nick Nolte in 1982.

There was going to be an episode of Saturday Night Live in which Nick Nolte was going to host, but he ended up canceling at the last minute, which left producers scrambling to find a new host that night.

They decided to let Murphy both host and act in that night’s episode, making him the first and only current cast member of Saturday Night Live to do so.

Eddie Murphy made his first million in a movie as Lieutenant T.M. Landry in the 1984 comedy Best Defense.

This was a major leap from the $4,500 per episode that Murphy was making during his early years on Saturday Night Live or even when the show began to pay him $30,000 per episode.

The next biggest movie in Eddie Murphy’s career was his role as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop in 1984 and Beverly Hills Cop II in 1987.

This would be the beginning of a film series that Murphy is still a major part of, with Beverly Hills Cop 4 having recently been announced.

For the first film in the Beverly Hills Cop series, the comedian made $14 million.

He made $8 million for the second film of the series.

Murphy took on the extravagant role of Prince Akeem in Coming to America in 1988, where he also played the characters Saul (the old white guy), Clarence (the barber), and Randy Watson (lead singer of “Sexual Chocolate”) in the film.

He would earn $8 million from this film.

Becoming One Of The Highest Paid Actors

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, Eddie Murphy would become one the highest paid actors in Hollywood and would be the sixth highest-grossing American actor in the box office.

Over the course of his career, Murphy had earned $300 million in salaries and backend royalties.

Murphy often credits some of the biggest mistakes of his career to the money he was being offered.

Having grown up in the projects of New York, Murphy had learned that you never turn down good money because you never know when your luck will run out.

Although he had grown tired of his role as Axel Foley by Beverly Hills Cop III and having to work with Roger Ebert, Murphy claims that “$15 million was worth having Roger Ebert’s thumb up my a**.”

In 1996, Eddie Murphy became Sherman Klump, the Klump family, and Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor, in which he earned $16 million for his work.

When the second film of the series came out, Murphy earned a $20 million salary in addition to 20% of gross receipts.

Since the release of Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Murphy has earned a total of $60 million for that one movie alone.

In 1998, he starred as Dr. John Dolittle in Doctor Dolittle and earned $17.5 million for the role.

Only three years later, Murphy would reprise the title role in Doctor Dolittle 2 and earn $20 million.

That same year, he took on the voice acting role of Donkey in the animated film Shrek and earned $3 million as the iconic character.

Eddie Murphy would go on to voice Donkey in a variety of projects, but he made more money from Shrek 2 by earning $10 million.

For Shrek Forever After, he made an initial $12 million from salary and backend points.

From Growing Up In The Projects To Owning Private Islands

Eddie Murphy was able to completely change his life thanks to his determination to succeed in the entertainment business.

Murphy went from barely being able to make it in life to being able to afford his own private islands.

In 2007, Eddie Murphy decided to purchase Rooster Cay in the Bahamas.

Between the family ties that he has in the Bahamas and his desperate need for a private life, Murphy has found that his private island is well worth the $15 million price tag.

Although Murphy has left the island mostly undeveloped, he and his family are able to enjoy the warm, tropical beach life that the Bahamas have to offer.

Before Murphy purchased Rooster Cay, he had owned another island near Nassau called Pearl Cay.

His Luxurious Homes

Eddie Murphy was making up for lost time when he began purchasing nicer homes for himself once he could afford to do so.

When Murphy first began receiving his $4,500 per week from Saturday Night Live, he moved into the nicest apartment complex that he could find in Hempstead.

By November of 1982, Murphy had moved on from his Hempstead apartment.

In 1985, he moved to the ritzy neighborhood of Bubble Hill in Eaglewood, New Jersey.

This property included a 25,000-square-foot colonial home that the actor purchased for $3.5 million.

He even wrote a song about the house but would later sell the property to Alicia Keys for $10 million.

When Eddie Murphy was only 27 years old, he bought a Moroccan home from Cher for $5.9 million.

The house had 11 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, a fishpond, a large swimming pool, and a guest house.

In 1995, Murphy purchased a 205-acre farm with an eight-stall horse barn for $2.5 million in Poughquag, New York.

The house is 11,500 square feet and features five bedrooms, five full bathrooms, a seven-acre pond, a tennis court, a movie theater with an arcade, a pool with a pool house, and a log cabin for guests.

Only three years later, Murphy and his then-wife Nicole Mitchell bought a luxurious palace in Granite Bay, California.

The house is 12,600 square feet and features a lakefront view near Folsom Lake, fountains around the entire house, and an infinity pool that peers over the Sierra Nevada mountains.

The interior of the home is covered in marble and has a two-story foyer with symmetrical Cinderella staircases on either side of the room.

Murphy sold the home for $6.1 million in 2007 after his divorce from Nicole Mitchell.

Moving His Movies To Streaming Platforms

In 2021, Amazon Studios convinced Eddie Murphy to sign a three-picture first-look film deal after the success that they found with Coming 2 America.

When the long-awaited sequel was released on Amazon Prime, it quickly became the most-watched movie on the streaming service in its opening week alone.

When the pandemic made the traditional way of releasing movies no longer profitable, Amazon Prime showed what kind of money there was to be made with a streaming release.

Despite purchasing Coming 2 America from Paramount for $125 million, the streaming company was able to pull in more viewers than ever before.

According to the movie deal, Murphy is set to help develop an original film series that he will potentially star in.

Amazon Studios recognizes the comedic and cinematic talent that Eddie Murphy has, which is why they want to give him a fresh canvas.

Although fans have been loving the late sequels to Murphy’s previous films, a completely new project will allow Murphy to take on a character who isn’t held back by the character choices made by previous writers or directors.

This isn’t the first time that a streaming service has given Eddie Murphy the reins for his own show.

Dolemite Is My Name, made for Netflix, has landed Murphy two Golden Globes in the categories Best Picture Comedy or Musical and Best Lead Actor Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

The fourth installment of the Beverly Hills Cop is also set to appear on Netflix.

Murphy turned down multiple offers to create this movie because he wanted to wait until he could find the perfect script.

Although the movie was announced shortly after Beverly Hills Cop 3, the deal to make the current version of the movie was not struck until 2019.

The Roles That Murphy Nearly Took

Although a younger Eddie Murphy was willing to take on whatever role he deemed worth the money, he didn’t star in all the movies that he intended to.

The first time this happened was during the 1980s when Eddie Murphy wanted to be the next Batman.

During the early 1980s, late film director Ivan Reitman wanted to unite two of his favorite Saturday Night Live cast members in a potentially hilarious Batman film with Murphy taking on the role of the Dark Knight himself.

Reitman wanted Bill Murray to play Batman’s loyal sidekick Robin, but the movie never even made it to production.

By the time Bill Murray had heard about it, the only conversation he would have about it was discussing roles with Murphy.

Although Murphy had already stated that he wanted to be Batman, Bill Murray had no intention of being anyone’s Boy Wonder.

Murray felt that he was way too old to be playing a role like Robin, with the tights he’d have to wear.

Bill Murray has been willing to admit that Eddie Murphy would have looked better in the Batsuit than him, he also knew that he’d look like a Christmas elf in Robin’s bright red and green attire.

Murray felt that there was too much vanity going into the production for him to want to continue.

In the 1980s, Eddie Murphy was also almost put in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

He almost played a character who was an astrophysicist who taught Berkeley, but it was difficult to fit his character into the film.

According to Leonard Nimoy, he felt that having Murphy’s character in the film was either going to be “the best idea or the worst idea,” In the end, the character was replaced by marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor, portrayed by Catherine Hicks.

Using Comedy To Support Importance Causes

Eddie Murphy has been grateful for the way that comedy has completely changed his life, from the emotional relief it brought him as a teenager to the fortune it brought him as an adult.

Whether Murphy is donating his time or his money to a cause, he brings a lot of attention wherever he goes.

Eddie Murphy was one of the most anticipated acts of the 2020 Feeding America Comedy Festival.

He performed a pre-recorded comedy sketch just for the festival alongside other popular comedians such as Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin James, Jim Jefferies, Keegan-Michael Key, George Lopez, Adam Sandler, and Kenan Thompson.

In 2012, Murphy was honored for his humanitarian work and the time spent supporting the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the AIDS Foundation, and a variety of cancer organizations.

Murphy also likes to support causes that look to improve the lives of the homeless, public education, and the creative arts.

He once donated $100,000 to the Screen Actors Guild’s “strike relief fund.”

Eddie Murphy takes his support of the AIDS Foundation incredibly seriously, especially when looking back at the uncalled-for jokes he made in one of his comedy specials.

He has admitted that he was completely in the wrong for using the slurs he did and made it a focus of his to learn more about how AIDS affects people.

Eddie Murphy may prefer to keep his philanthropic work and personal life private, but the impact he has had on the world is too large to ignore.