Eddie Murphy says Marlon Brando despised ‘kid with gun’ Clint Eastwood

2 July 2024

Eddie Murphy says Marlon Brando told him he despised “that kid with the gun” Clint Eastwood.

Eddie Murphy says Marlon Brando told him he despised ‘that kid with the gun’ Clint Eastwood

The ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ actor and comic, 63, opened up about his encounter with ‘On the Waterfront’ acting icon Marlon – who died in 2004 aged 80 from respiratory and heart failure after falling into morbid obesity – in a chat with the New York Times podcast ‘The Interview’.

He said about Marlon slamming Clint, 94, when he visited him after finishing his first film role in 1982’s ’48 Hrs.’ alongside Nick Nolte: “This is how long ago it was: He was going, ‘I can’t stand that kid with the gun’.

“I was like, ‘What kid with the gun?’ He said, ‘He’s on the poster!’

“I was like, ‘Clint Eastwood?’ ‘Yeah, that guy!’

“He was calling Clint Eastwood ‘that kid’.

Marlon was only six years older than Western hero Clint, who celebrated his 94th birthday in May and is still making movies.

Eddie said his time in Marlon’s home when he blasted Clint was the second time they had met.

He added the first was at a rooftop restaurant at the L’Ermitage hotel in Los Angeles, and said he cherished both meetings.

Eddie said: “I was having these famous people that I grew up watching on television wanting to have a meal with me.

“After ‘48 Hrs.’, Marlon Brando calls my agent and wants to meet me.

“Now I look back and go, ‘Wow, that’s crazy. The greatest actor of all time wants to have dinner with you!’

“But back then I just thought, ‘Well, that’s the way it is. You make a movie, and Marlon Brando calls’.”

Eddie also said that during their second meeting Marlon was “just going on and on” about his appearance in 1972’s ‘The Godfather’ while deriding the artform of acting.

He added: “(Marlon) was like, ‘Eh, ‘The Godfather’. Not just ‘The Godfather’ – acting.

“He was like, ‘Acting is bulls***, and everybody can act’.”

Marlon famously spent most of life slamming actors – including himself – as lying entertainers, frauds and pretenders, with his 1994 memoir ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’ packed with passages of self-hatred.