‘God was Looking Over Me’: Why Eddie Murphy Turned Down Drugs
By Movieguide® Contributor
When actor Eddie Murphy rose to fame in the 1980s, many avenues opened up for him, but drugs were not a road he wanted to go down.
Murphy recalled a time with actors Robin Williams and John Belushi when “they started doing coke.”
Murphy, who was 19 at the time, didn’t participate. Belushi made fun of him for it, but that didn’t sway Murphy.
“Over the years, I trip about that moment because I was really young, and it was so easy to try some coke. I wasn’t taking some moral stance. I just wasn’t interested in it,” the DADDY DAYCARE star told FOX.
“To not have the desire, the curiosity of it, I’d say that’s providence,” he said. “God was looking over me in that moment, I didn’t make a left turn. Everything would have been different.”
Only two years later, Belushi died from a drug overdose. Williams struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for much of his life and committed suicide in 2014.
“When you get famous really young, especially a black artist, it’s like living in a minefield,” Murphy said. “Any moment, you can step on a mine. Any moment something can happen that can undo everything. But I was oblivious to the fact I was in a minefield.”
“And now, at this age, I can look back and be like, ‘Wow, I came through a minefield [over] 35 years.’ How do you make it through a minefield for 35, 40 years? Something has to be looking over you,” the SHREK voice actor added.
Murphy doesn’t drink and never tried marijuana until he turned 30.
“There are a bunch of things like that that I look back on and be like, ‘Wow.’ And that just reaffirms my faith,” Murphy previously said. “I know that God is real. There’s been a bunch of times when I could have wound up crashing and burning.”
Comedian Richard Pryor struggled with substance abuse, but Murphy looked up to him.
“Richard had substance problems and alcohol [problems]. He had all these demons and stuff. We had nothing in common, outside of the fact that we were both funny,” Murphy said.
“All I wanted to do creatively was meet Richard Pryor and be funny to [him],” he said.
When he got his chance to meet him, Murphy gave him a copy of his first album, “Eddie Murphy,” which featured songs with comical lyrics.
“He was laughing. He was laughing at my stuff,” Murphy recalled. “I could have died right there, could’ve crashed the plane right there…I made Richard laugh for real.”
“You don’t see Richard laugh a lot. You never see Richard’s real laugh,” he said.
Pryor and Murphy performed together in HARLEM NIGHTS.
Pryor said, “I like Eddie a lot. Eddie’s good inside. [He’s a] natural, it’s real.”
“I’m hard to get inside. But I wouldn’t mind getting to know Eddie and sharing some real stuff, friendship. I don’t think I could pick a better person than Eddie,” he said.
Movieguide® previously reported how Murphy loves his family:
“I am so blessed with my kids,” he said. “I don’t have one bad seed. I don’t have any like ‘Oh you are the one.’ I don’t have any of that. My kids are so great, normal people — and nobody is like the Hollywood jerk kid.”
Murphy has spoken openly about how important his family is before.
“My career, or what I am as an artist, that’s not at the center of my life. At the center of my life is my family and my kids,” Murphy told Vanity Fair in 2020. “That’s the principal relationship, and everything comes after that. I have 10 kids, and I’m present, and I’m part of their lives. You got to have some kind of balance with career and personal life. I started making movies when I was 20, and I auditioned for SNL when I was 18, so that’s 40 years ago. So I had a little crossroads where it was like, It’s time to back off, and sit on the couch and just be Dad.”
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