Comedy star Eddie Murphy received the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Golden Globes' highest honor, for his "outstanding contributions to entertainment," according to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that awards the award.

Upon receiving the award, Murphy directed his advice to new filmmakers: "Pay your taxes, mind your business, and keep the name of Will Smith's wife out of your mouth!", referring to Will Smith's famous slap at the 2022 Oscars.

Previous nominations

Murphy has been nominated for six Golden Globe Awards, winning once, in 2007 for the hit musical Dreamgirls.

The Cecil B. DeMille Award is the first of two of the Golden Globes' most prestigious awards.

With Eddie Murphy winning it, he joins a fine list of names, such as Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Spielberg, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford, and others.

Well deserved award and smart choice

"We are honored to present the Cecil B. DeMille Award this year to the celebrated and highly respected Mr. Eddie Murphy. We are pleased to celebrate the enduring impact on film and television that his career - in front of and behind the camera - has made over the decades," the Golden Globes said in the statement.

Eddie Murphy has received many awards in recent years.

In 2022 he accepted a lifetime achievement award from the Critics Choice Association, and he accepted the award with a short speech saying, "Making people laugh is the greatest blessing on earth."

In 2020, he won an Emmy Award for Guest Actor for his return to "Saturday Night Live" on NBC.

In 2015, he was awarded the Writer's Mark Twain Award for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

A Hollywood insider told The Post that choosing Murphy this year is a smart choice by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The award ceremony was canceled on NBC last year for ethical reasons, the most important of which is not The presence of any member of African descent, and NBC followed closely the condemnation of what it considered "racist rhetoric" from the former president of the association.

The association benefits from Eddie Murphy's presence, as it helps bring other celebrities back to the Golden Globes, according to the same source. You never get used to nominating black works or black actors.” This does not negate Murphy’s deserving of the honor for his long and important career, but it is a step indicative of the Golden Globe’s attempt to purify its previous racism that made it lose its position as the second most important award after the Oscar.

Honoring an entertainment career that spans five decades, Eddie Murphy will receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award at this year's #GoldenGlobes!

Tune-in Tuesday, January 10 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT on @nbc and @peacock 🏆 pic.twitter.com/bNromwJlwz

- Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) December 14, 2022

Change American comedy

New York native Eddie Murphy, 61, became a dominant comedic voice in the United States during the 1980s. He acted, sang and gave voice performances, through a largely personal comedy based on observational power, keen intelligence and the ability to pick up details that the average audience overlooks.

Murphy began performing stand-up comedy in New York City from his teens, and was only 19 when he joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live" in 1980. He quickly became the show's best-selling actor, creating memorable characters such as Mister Robinson, his parody of children's host Mister Rogers.

Cinema and Hollywood could not ignore this great talent. In 1982, he presented his first film, "48 Hours" (48 Hours), which achieved great success, and followed it with three other successes at the box office: "Beverly Hills Cop." in 1984, “Trading Places” in 1983, and “The Golden Child” in 1986. He left “Saturday Night Live” in 1984 to focus on film and his career in it.

In the next phase, Eddie Murphy began to challenge himself. Far from presenting second parts of the films "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Policeman", he presented in 1987 "Eddie Murphy Raw", during which he documented two of his live performances, and the movie The comedian “Coming 2 America”, in which he played four different roles, in addition to achieving remarkable success in pop music with the song “Party All the Time”, and he even experienced writing and film directing in the movie “ Harlem Nights in 1989, but it was not a successful experience.

Murphy has also had success with animated family films, providing the voice of Mushu in Mulan and the donkey in the Shrek series.

The Golden Globes ceremony will return to broadcast live in 2023 after a year of stopping broadcasting as a result of the bad reputation gained by the main organizing body of the award, so during the past year a comprehensive overhaul was carried out and a new voting category was added.

Murphy's most recent work is the starring role in the comedy "Coming to America" ​​with Amazon, which is the sequel to the 1988 super-successful movie of the same name.

His upcoming projects include the romantic comedy "You People," as well as producing and starring in the fourth installment of the popular "Beverly Hills Cop" series.