Eddie Murphy Quotes

I wasn't really qualified to be on Saturday Night Live - I'm not like an impressionist or anything.

I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian - or just being in show business, is really more accurate.

Seeing the energy of 'SNL' made me want to be a part of it. If that was a job, I thought, that was the job I wanted. That was my plan. Comedy.

I'm not totally sure what I want to be doing, but it's so fun to be on 'SNL' because you get exposed to so many different people and so many different experiences. It's a cool, lucky way to break into the business.

It's still amazing to me to walk down the halls of 'SNL.' You see pictures of the greatest comedians we grew up worshiping, basically. It's crazy to be able to still work there.

If you can survive 'Saturday Night Live,' then you're good as far as show business is concerned.

Fame is part of me and my life as an actor. I enjoy the creative aspects of my life as an actor. I enjoy directing and acting as well. But the bottom line for me is not prestige and power. It's about having an exciting, creative life.

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.

For me, I don't have a publicist. I don't want to talk about my personal life. I don't want to talk about my process. I don't want to be a model and do fashion shoots. It's nice to be an entertainer, but I'm a reluctant celebrity.

I've done comedy most of my career, which I love, but I wanted to expand.

I think the best thing I ever did was, years before I got the 'Late Night' show, when I first got out to Los Angeles to be a television writer, the first thing I did was I signed up to take improvisational classes... And I studied that for years, and I really loved it.

Besides me wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a movie star.

The one thing I could do was voices and impersonations and weird characters, and there was really no call for that, except on Saturday Night Live.

I love doing comedy. Absolutely love it. After 'Wedding Crashers,' people suddenly realized that it was something I could do.

A movie star is not an artist, he is an art object.

I love being an entertainer - not really fond of being a celebrity.

I wanted to be on 'Saturday Night Live' since I was ten.

I wanted to be in New York because I wanted to be on 'SNL.' I spent a lot of time wanting to be on 'Saturday Night Live' as a kid. That's what I wanted.

In college, I didn't perform so much, but when I graduated is when I discovered Second City. Then I realized, 'Oh, there are people who can focus on comedy and especially improvisational comedy and make a career out of it.'

Every actor is a model to a certain extent, since they have to do so much press.

I started in improv and went into different kinds of things.

John Belushi made me want to be an actor.

I took my pants off in my 'SNL' audition. It was to do a character called Out of Breath Jogger from 1982. I had short shorts on underneath. It eventually aired, so it was worth it!

When I was super famous, there was definitely a distinction between how one was treated if they were on TV and how one was treated if they were on film. I don't know that that distinction exists as much now.

Every day I wake up I am thankful and every night I am very thankful that I've made a career out of the phrase 'Let's get ready to rumble!'