Why Eddie Murphy Ditched His Iconic Laugh After Beverly Hills Cop: 'I Forced Myself to Stop' 

Eddie Murphy shares why he ditched his signature laugh.

In a recent interview with CBR during the promotion Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Fanswered the 63-year-old actor when asked about the disappearance of his character Axel Foley’s unique laugh in the new sequel.

Murphy, who first gained fame as Saturday night live cast member in the early 80s before 1984 Beverly Hills Cop, he said he stopped laughing like that decades ago in response to how many people would imitate it by doing impressions of him.

“[That was] not Axel’s laugh, that was my laugh. In the 80s I thought, ‘I don’t want to be known for laughing.’ I noticed that some people would do an impression of me and that’s all they would do, laugh,” Murphy explained.

“I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to stop laughing like that.’ I forced myself to stop laughing like that, which is a really unnatural thing, now I don’t laugh like that anymore.”

He continued: “Impressions and only, they’ve worked too hard on it. Even still, if you say, ‘Make an impression,’ they’ll laugh and talk like an ass [from Shrek.] If you say ‘For Eddie Murphy’, they’ll say ‘Hey, how are you!’ That’s not me.”

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Murphy returns as Detective Axel Foley Axel F, a sequel that reunites him with original stars Judge Reinhold, Bronson Pinchot and John Ashton for another California adventure. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Taylor Paige, Paul Reiser and Kevin Bacon also star in the film, which comes almost exactly 40 years after the original hit theaters, and 30 years since the last installment.

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While speaking to CBR, Murphy said that it took that long to make the fourth one Beverly Hills Cop because he was waiting for the screenwriters to develop a high-quality story to work with.

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“I always tell writers, when you write something, give me something that’s solid, a solid story, and I’ll make a comedy. I’ll make it funny. Original Beverly Hills Cop the script wasn’t written funny, it was a Sylvester Stallone action movie,’ Murphy said.

“If you give me something that any action star has, I’m not going to play it like Stallone, I’m not going to play it like Tom Cruise, I’m going to play it like me, so it adds this funny element to it.”

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is on Netflix on July 3rd.

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Source: HIS Education