NEED TO KNOW
It wasn’t “hard to say goodbye” to the Oscars for Eddie Murphy.
The Pickup star, 64, revealed why he left the 2007 Academy Awards early after he lost the Best Actor in a Supporting Role award for his portrayal of James Early in Dreamgirls to Alan Arkin, despite previously having won several awards for the role.
“What happened was I was at the Oscars, I had lost, and then people kept coming over to me and kept [patting] me on the shoulder,” Murphy told Entertainment Weekly while chatting about his Netflix documentary, Being Eddie.
“Clint Eastwood came and rubbed my shoulder. And I was like, ‘Oh, no, no, I’m not gonna be this guy all night. Let’s just leave,’ ” he recalled. “I didn’t storm out. I was like, ‘I’m not gonna be the sympathy guy all night.’ ”
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Murphy was finally clearing up rumors that he left the show early — and missed his costar Jennifer Hudson’s win for Best Supporting Actress for playing Effie White in the film, as well as his costars’ performance in honor of their Best Original Song nomination — due to being mad about his loss.
He noted to EW that he even predicted that Arkin, who died in 2023 at the age of 89, would win due to his performance in Little Miss Sunshine, which he had seen a few months before the awards show. He told the outlet that the actor had been “hysterically funny” in his role as Edwin Hoover, a foul-mouthed, but intuitive grandfather who encourages his granddaughter’s beauty pageant dreams.
“Jeff Katzenberg invited me over to see Little Miss Sunshine six months before it came out in the theaters, and I literally watched the movie and I watched Alan — and I hadn’t been nominated or anything yet — and I watched the movie and I turned to Jeff afterwards and I said, ‘Now that performance right there is one of those performances that will steal somebody’s Oscar,’ ” Murphy recalled to EW.
“I said those exact words. I was like, ‘He could steal somebody’s Oscar,’ then he stole mine,” he said, before clarifying with a laugh, “No, I don’t feel like he stole mine.”
The Coming 2 America actor told EW that, since his Oscar nomination, he has learned that winning the prestigious film award is “more art than science.”
“It’s not like, ‘Oh, you do this, and you do that, and you win the Oscar.’ No, it’s all this intangible stuff that comes with winning: campaigning and your past stuff and what do they owe you and s—. All of that stuff comes into play when you get Oscars,” he explained.
Paramount Pictures
Murphy said he believed that Arkin had the winning combination when he won that year, adding, “When you add all of that stuff into it, he totally deserves his Oscar for his whole career. He’s an amazing actor.”
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In his new documentary, Being Eddie, Murphy also addressed his feelings on getting prepared for an awards show and leaving empty-handed.
“The mindf— for me is that I get dressed and come to the thing, ’cause I would usually not go to award shows,” he shared in the documentary, per EW. “Whenever I lose, I’m like, ‘These motherf—ers made me come all the way down. I could have f—ing lost at home. I’m all in the f—ing tuxedo. What a waste of time.’ ”
Being Eddie is currently streaming on Netflix.
