Eddie Murphy says he didn’t storm out of the Academy Awards after his “Dreamgirls” loss. He left because he could see the night turning into a long walk through consolation lines. “Clint Eastwood came and rubbed my shoulder,” Murphy recalled in an interview tied to his Netflix documentary “Being Eddie.” “And I was like, oh, no, no, I’m not gonna be this guy all night. Let’s just leave… I’m not gonna be the sympathy guy all night.”
The moment came at the 79th Academy Awards in 2007, where Murphy competed for best supporting actor and lost to Alan Arkin for “Little Miss Sunshine,” according to the Academy’s published winners and nominees list. Murphy’s early exit fueled a rumor that he bolted in anger, since he missed Jennifer Hudson’s supporting-actress win for “Dreamgirls” and the film’s on-stage musical segment later in the broadcast. Murphy said the talk missed the point: he wanted to avoid being treated like a defeat story for the rest of the evening.
Murphy also pushed back on the idea that the trophy shocked him. He said he saw “Little Miss Sunshine” months before release at a screening hosted by Jeffrey Katzenberg and told the executive that Arkin’s work looked like the kind of performance that “will steal somebody’s Oscar.” Murphy joked that Arkin then “stole” his, before adding he didn’t see it that way. He called Arkin “hysterically funny” and said the late actor “totally deserves” the win, pointing to the way Oscar races reward campaigning, career narratives, and industry sentiment alongside the work on screen.
The comments revive an old awards-season flashpoint at a time Murphy is revisiting his career on camera. In “Being Eddie,” he says awards shows can feel like a setup: he has to put on a tuxedo and sit through the ceremony just to lose. Murphy also pointed back to his 1988 Oscars appearance, when he used the stage to call out the Academy’s track record on recognizing Black performers.
