← Eddie Murphy Decoded: Road to the Riches & the Oscars

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By Anslem Samuel | Published September 19, 2011 | Full size is 620 × 480 pixels

MULTIPLE ROLES Actors already have the daunting tasks of memorizing their lines and to be sure to convey the emotions of their roles. Several of Murphy’s films have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled those duties as he played multiple characters. Thankfully, the method works most of the time. He played four characters in the classic Coming To America, which grossed $288,752,301 worldwide. Bowfinger ($98 million-plus worldwide with a $55 million budget) and Norbit ($159 million with a $60 million budget) also performed well at the box office. Murphy’s most memorable moment of playing separate characters, however was in the Nutty Professor series, where he plays protagonist Sherman Klump, antagonist Buddy Love, five (!) of Klump’s family members (often with the whole family in one scene), and a workout instructor named Lance Perkins. The two films grossed a whopping $440,300,909 worldwide.

MULTIPLE ROLES

Actors already have the daunting tasks of memorizing their lines and to be sure…

(Image: Getty)