Overview
- AFI’s Board of Trustees formally selected Murphy for the institute’s top career honor in film.
- Board chair Kathleen Kennedy hailed him as “an American icon” with a five-decade impact across film, television and stand-up.
- Murphy will be the fourth Black recipient, following Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington.
- Box-office tallies place him among the industry’s top five performers with more than $3.8 billion in grosses and the highest-grossing SNL alumnus.
- The announcement comes as Murphy is featured in the new Netflix documentary Being Eddie.