Rollercoaster life of Axel F star Eddie Murphy who overcame murder of dad, faced wrangles over 10 kids & found new love
GUN-TOTING, whip-smart and with a mouth like a docker, Detective Alexander “Axel” Foley became an Eighties icon.
Eddie Murphy’s wisecracking protagonist starred in three Beverly Hills Cop films before appearing to retire, but 40 years after the original hit screens he is back.
The fourth instalment lands today on Netflix and will introduce the foul-mouthed cop — the first film has 60 uses of f*** and 44 uses of s*** — to a whole new generation.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F has been a long time coming, with roots in the mid-Nineties.
Eddie — a dad of TEN — revealed: “We’ve been trying to develop another Beverly Hills Cop since 1996. The third film we did in 1994, I didn’t think the movie came out good.
“There’s been ten different scripts and a bunch of different producers and we just tried for years and years and it wouldn’t come together until we got Jerry (Bruckheimer) back involved, the original producer. Then it all came together.”
Now 63, Eddie admits reprising the role of Axel has been physically demanding.
He explains: “I don’t run and jump with the same ease and grace that I did when I was 21.”
Fans will also notice the new film is missing that trademark Axel laugh.
Eddie recently revealed it was his genuine cackle, but that he had become tired of fellow comics using it to impersonate him so “forced” himself to change it.
‘I took it for granted’
Netflix is bringing back much-loved original characters, played by the same cast including Judge Reinhold (Det Billy Rosewood), John Ashton (Sgt Taggart), Paul Reiser (Jeffrey) and Bronson Pinchot (Serge).
The soundtrack also features Harold Faltermeyer’s original Axel F song reworked by rapper Lil Nas X.
The film follows Axel, in his trademark baseball jacket, as he returns to Beverly Hills and his old pals after someone threatens his daughter Jane, played by Taylour Paige.
Eddie was just 21 when the first Beverly Hills Cop was released.
He said: “Now I look back at those times and I trip about how young I was. But back then I kind of took it for granted.
“One thing had led to another and I wound up on a movie set.
“Then when stuff worked and became hit movies, I was like, ‘OK, that’s what it’s supposed to be’.”
But his private life has garnered just as much intrigue as his movie career.
Eddie has fathered his ten children — aged between five and 34 — with five women, including a 17-year-old daughter with British pop star Mel B.
He met the Spice Girl in 2006 at one of his dinner parties and they had an intense, nine-month romance.
While Mel was pregnant with Angel Iris, the couple were at loggerheads, with Eddie even quipping that the baby might not be his. He told a reporter: “I don’t know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions, sir.”
However, they have since worked things out and are devoted co-parents.
Mel, 49, said on US chat show Larry King Live: “Our relationship may have been brief but it was intense.
“We were very much in love and wanted to have a family together. That’s that. I mean, we’re both tattooed. You don’t tattoo somebody’s name on your body if it’s brief and unimportant, let’s put it that way.”
My career, or what I am as an artist, that’s not at the centre of my life. At the centre of my life is my family and my kids.
Eddie Murphy
Eddie had his eldest son Eric, 34, with former flame Paulette McNeely, and another son, Christian, 33, with Tamara Hood.
He shares Bria, 34, Myles, 31, Shayne, 29, Zola, 24, and Bella, 22, with Nicole Murphy, who he married in 1993.
But things looked rocky when Eddie was pulled over by cops in 1995 with transgender sex worker Atisone Seiuli in the passenger seat.
Eddie claimed he was being a “good Samaritan” and giving her a ride home.
While he wasn’t arrested or charged with anything, the incident made international headlines. Seiuli was arrested and jailed for an outstanding warrant for prostitution.
Seiuli fanned the flames and gave an interview about their short car ride. She told The National Enquirer: “It’s unfair I went to jail while Eddie Murphy walked away scot free.”
Nicole stood by Eddie but the marriage didn’t last and in 2005 she divorced the actor without giving a reason publicly. The pair have remained on friendly terms.
After his split from Mel B, Eddie had a symbolic marriage with TV producer Tracey Edmonds on a private Polynesian island, saying it was the “perfect” day. But the pair parted ways before the end of the month.
It was rumoured that his mum had told Eddie “It’s me or her” and that the couple had furiously argued during the honeymoon. Finally, in 2012, aged 51, he met the love of his life, Australian model Paige Butcher 18 years his junior.
They got engaged in 2018 and share daughter Izzy, eight, and son Max, five.
Eddie sent the rumour mill into overdrive during a recent podcast interview as he referred to Paige, now 44, as his wife. And at the world premiere of Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, in Los Angeles, Eddie was spotted with a ring on his wedding finger.
He was joined at the event by Paige and three of his daughters.
Despite his string of failed relationships — including a rumoured fling with the late singer Whitney Houston in the mid-Eighties — the funnyman insists the centre of his world is his family. He is now a granddad, after son Myles had daughter Evie Isla, now five, with partner Carly Fink.
Eddie told Vanity Fair mag: “My career, or what I am as an artist, that’s not at the centre of my life. At the centre of my life is my family and my kids.”
Work does, however, still matter to him, as he took a break from acting after being at the centre of criticism.
‘This ain’t fun’
He recalled on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in 2021: “I had stopped making movies in 2011. Because I was making these sh***y movies, and it was like, ‘This s**t ain’t fun’. They giving me Razzies; I think these motherf***ers gave me the Worst Actor Ever Razzie.”
Since returning to the silver screen Eddie has been selective with his roles, making just nine films. But he proved earlier critics wrong last year when the Golden Globes presented him with the Cecil B. DeMille Award for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment”.
As a veteran of the big screen for more than four decades, it is well deserved.
And he is even a hit with kids thanks to playing the loveable, if infuriating, Donkey in the Shrek series, which has netted him £2.5million since 2001.
It is a far cry from his humble childhood in Brooklyn, New York City, where he was taken into care after his father was murdered.
He has explained: “My mother and father broke up when I was three and he died when I was eight, so I have very dim memories. He was a victim of the Murphy charm.
“A woman stabbed my father. I never got all the logistics. It was supposed to be one of those crimes of passion, ‘If I can’t have you, no one else will’ kind of deal.”
After the death, Eddie and his brother, Charlie, spent a year in foster care as his mum was too unwell to look after them.
Rather than moping, he focused on making other people laugh.
He has said: “Every time the bus stopped, whoever got off the bus, I would start talking, like, doing what that person was saying and where they’re going, and like a voice for that person.
“I was doing it loud enough and the whole bus was laughing, and it went on for like a half hour. Then when I got off the bus, the whole bus clapped.” It set him on the path to comedy, and by 15 he was doing skits and impressions of famous people at Long Island clubs and bars.
He said: “Around 15 I started saying, ‘When I’m 18, I’m gonna get famous’.”
And he wasn’t far wrong. At 19 he was signed for Saturday Night Live and cemented his role as a regular on American TV.
He recalled: “I couldn’t have been in a better place than SNL, that’s the Harvard of comedy schools.”
He was then catapulted to worldwide fame with Beverly Hills Cop.
And after 20 years, Eddie revealed his detective alter-ego was never too far away, saying: “It was about getting a good script and getting to the set. As soon as they said, ‘Action’, I was Axel again.”