Eddie Murphy is back in the spotlight due to his latest film, the, surprisingly, and refreshingly very entertaining Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, releasing tomorrow, July 3, 2024, on Netflix.
On a recent interview on The New York Times’ podcast, The Interview, Eddie Murphy discussed the time he was invited to Marlon Brando’s house following the success of his first ever film role, 48 Hrs (1982).
During the podcast, Murphy revealed that Marlon Brando, who was notorious for never once mincing a word, had said, ‘I can’t stand that kid with the gun.’ I was like, ‘What kid with the gun?’ He said, ‘He’s on the poster!’ ” Murphy recalled.
“I was like, ‘Clint Eastwood?’ ‘Yeah, that guy!’
He was calling Clint Eastwood ‘that kid,’” Murphy said.
Funny enough, Brando was actually only six years the senior to Eastwood. But then again, in Brando’s eyes, everyone is probably an untalented, useless kid.
Adding about their encounter, Murphy said that Brand picked him up at a rooftop restaurant at the L’Ermitage luxury hotel in Los Angeles, before inviting him back to his home.
“He came and picked me up at the hotel,” Murphy said. “But there was a time mix-up, and I came down like a half-hour late — he was waiting for me in the car.” They went to Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive – notoriously called Bad Boy Drive, as it claimed Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Marlon Brando as inhabitants – where Murphy said he just went on and on about Brando’s performance in The Godfather, something the screen legend ostensibly brushed off with indifference.
“He was like, ‘Eh, The Godfather.’ Not just ‘The Godfather’ — acting,” Murphy said. “He was like, ‘Acting is bullshit, and everybody can act.’”
Still, Murphy clearly recalled fondly of the memory.
“I was having these famous people that I grew up watching on television wanting to have a meal with me,” he said. “Now I look back and go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy. The greatest actor of all time wants to have dinner with you!’ But back then I just thought, ‘Well, that’s the way it is. You make a movie, and Marlon Brando calls.’”
