Comedy legend Eddie Murphy has been a fan favorite actor for decades now — but even he has some regrets about films he wishes he'd starred in, ones that could’ve made him even more beloved than he was at the height of his career.
“Yeah, there’s a couple of movies,” he told the Associated Press in a recent interview where he addressed movies he wished he’d done. “Ghostbusters, I was supposed to do Ghostbusters. Didn’t do that. And Rush Hour. Didn’t do that. Oh, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Those are my big three ‘wish I would have done’ movies. They were huge giant hits.”
That said, he had a pretty good career without those movies. “Well, with Ghostbusters, I did Beverly Hills Cop instead. So, it was like, it was do this or that, so it worked out cool,” Murphy noted, but with some of the other ones, it wasn’t quite as seamless. “And Who Framed Roger Rabbit just sounded ridiculous to me, and I passed on it. And, afterwards, I was like, 'Oh that’s f***ing amazing,’” he explained.
No matter his regrets, Murphy is one of the best known comedic actors of our time. He became famous after his four-year stint on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984, and went on to leading roles in films like Coming to America, The Nutty Professor, and Dr. Dolittle. He also became known for his voiceover work in animated films, particularly his voice work as Mushu the dragon in Disney’s Mulan and Donkey in Dreamworks’ animated series Shrek.
Murphy opened up about working on the fifth installment in the Shrek franchise, which is set to be released in 2027, during the a recent chat with The Hollywood Reporter. “You have a headache after a Shrek session. The donkey has a lot of singing,” he explained. “You’re on 10, and you’re doing it over and over again. The great thing, though, is it’s appreciated. Everybody loves the movie.”
He added: "Nothing’s worse than working really hard on something and doing makeup and sweat and all this s***, and then you put it out, and they’d be like, ‘Two thumbs down.’ You go, ‘I was in the makeup chair for 50 hours.’”
Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images for Netflix.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
