Motivational Story - Eddie Murphy (Actor / Comedian)



Greetings! For this piece, I want to zero in on what FOUR MINUTES meant to an aspiring comedian one day and how it changed his entire life? The parallel is that every athlete no matter the level, can get that call one day or opportunity and it’s what you do with it that can elevate your status and make a career blossom.

This week I am focusing on Eddie Murphy. This is to show you that even the ‘best of the best’ have to scrape their way out of barrel at some point in their life to achieve any form of success. When Murphy was just reaching the age of 18 and still in high school, he was selling shoes part time. He was also battling through countless rejections from various comedy clubs in the New York area that he was trying to get auditions. Over time, Eddie began to impress a few club owners and build an audience for his comedy.

When he had heard that the famed Saturday Night Live show was hiring new comedians for the 1980 television season, Murphy, still in his teenage years (now 19), jumped at the opportunity. He auditioned but it took several call backs where he had to come in and perform a solo routine in front of the show executives and talent personnel that hired the cast.

SNL would sign Eddie Murphy to a small part deal, making him little more than an extra with very limited speaking parts. With a foot in the door as he viewed it, Murphy kept working on his material and waited for his one opportunity and it came when the SNL producers accidentally left FOUR MINUTES of LIVE TELEVISION unaccounted for at the very end of a show. Just as they discovered the omission and producers began yelling and screaming over who screwed up, they called on Murphy. Without any rehearsals or knowing what he would say, the producers put him out front of a national television audience and millions of viewers … and in those FOUR MINUTES, Eddie Murphy WOWED AMERICA! He became an overnight sensation.

Within the next few weeks, SNL would elevate Murphy to a more prominent role on the show, allowing him chances to create feature characters. Soon afterward, Hollywood knocked on his door and Eddie became a global box office star with his work in hit movies such as “Trading Places”, “Beverly Hills Cop”, “Coming to America” and the “Shrek” series among others.

For those who dare to pursue their vision, no matter how unprecedented or outside the mainstream or improbable the odds may be, Eddie Murphy offers up this advice: “Put your weight on it and don’t waver!”

I am going to leave you with this great quote about Opportunity: ”I believe that no matter how many mistakes we’ve made; how badly we’ve screwed up or how dejected we've become; as long as there is true steadfast ambition, all of us have an opportunity for greatness” – stated by Dave Pelzer, a best selling American author of several self-help books.


Jim Loria

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