Hollywood star Eddie Murphy has revealed why he never got involved with hard drugs, saying a remark from fellow comedian Pauly Shore scared him off for good.
The 64-year-old told Collider that while he experimented with marijuana and once took a dentist-prescribed painkiller in his 20s, he was never interested in stronger drugs.
“I never had interest in hard stuff,” Murphy said. He recalled taking Percocet for dental pain, finishing the prescription, but soon realizing it wasn’t for him.
The turning point came at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Murphy said he had taken Percocet and smoked a joint that night when Pauly Shore walked up and said: “You don’t even look like yourself tonight.”
Murphy laughed as he recalled the moment. “I was like, ‘Who do I look like?’ He said, ‘Some other dude,’ and walked away. Right there I decided I wasn’t messing with that anymore.”
The actor said the comment made him stop experimenting with drugs immediately. “I was like, what was I looking like? That was it for me,” he said.
Murphy is now preparing to star in a biopic about Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton and will also play Inspector Clouseau in a new Pink Panther remake. He explained that he studies his characters briefly and then relies on instinct to bring them to lif
