LOS ANGELES (AP) — Eddie Murphy is being celebrated with a life achievement award from the American Film Institute, AFI’s board of trustees said Friday. The award will be handed out at a gala tribute in Los Angeles, at the Dolby Theatre, on April 18.
“Eddie Murphy is an American icon,” said Kathleen Kennedy, who chairs the institute’s board of trustees. “A trailblazing force in the art forms of film, television and stand-up comedy, his versatility knows no bounds.”
Murphy, 64, has been a force in entertainment for nearly 50 years, as a teenage stand-up phenomenon, on television as a part of the “Saturday Night Live” cast, and in film where he’s ruled the box office in multiple decades, with hits like “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Coming to America,” “The Nutty Professor” and the “Shrek” movies. In 2007, he was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for “Dreamgirls,” which had already earned him a Screen Actors Guild award and a Golden Globe, but he didn’t win the Academy Award.
In a new documentary about his life and career, “Being Eddie,” which is currently streaming on Netflix, Murphy reflected that he was more annoyed about having to put on a tux and go to the event than he was about losing.
“It’s always wonderful to win stuff, but if I don’t win, I don’t give a (expletive),” he said. “I’m still Eddie in the morning.”
In 2023, Murphy got the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, where he kept his remarks to a speedy two minutes. He told The Associated Press in 2021 that he has a different perspective on things than he did during the height of his fame.
“You take everything for granted when you’re young, how successful I was,” Murphy said. “Now I take nothing for granted and appreciate everything.”
AFI’s gala tributes are often starry affairs. Last year at Francis Ford Coppola’s dinner, Steven Spielberg, Robert De Niro and Harrison Ford were among those who turned out to toast Coppola.
Murphy is the 51st recipient of the AFI life achievement award, which was first handed out in 1973 to John Ford. Other recent honorees include Nicole Kidman, Julie Andrews and Denzel Washington.
New Year’s Rockin’ Eve co-hosts: Chance the
Rapper, Gronkowski, Julianne Hough, Rita Ora
NEW YORK (AP) — Ryan Seacrest will have some starry help ushering in 2026 on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” — Chance the Rapper, Rob Gronkowski, Julianne Hough and Rita Ora have all signed up.
ABC said Monday that Seacrest and Ora will anchor the celebrations from New York City at Times Square, Chance the Rapper will do the same from his native Chicago, while former NFL star Gronkowski and Hough will beam from Las Vegas. Details for a Puerto Rico celebration will be revealed soon.
Seacrest inherited ABC’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” from Dick Clark and has been involved with the show since 2006.
“Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2026” airs Dec. 31 live on ABC beginning at 8 p.m. EST, and the next day on Hulu.
More performers will be announced later.
Atkinson’s Revolutionary War trilogy
to be adapted into graphic editions
NEW YORK (AP) — Prize-winning military historian Rick Atkinson, a comic book fan growing up, hadn’t imagined his own work being suitable for the illustrated format.
Ten Speed Graphic announced Tuesday that a graphic edition of “The British Are Coming,” the first volume of Atkinson’s acclaimed Revolutionary War trilogy, will be out next June, shortly before the country’s 250th anniversary. Five more graphic books are planned, to be written by Nora Neus and illustrated by Federico Pietrobon, with Atkinson in close collaboration.
“They are entirely amenable to my suggestions, ‘This isn’t quite right,’ or ‘I think this needs to be explained,’” Atkinson told The Associated Press. “With the drawings, I pointed out that John Adams, at the time the revolution began was a relatively young man. And they had made him look like the paunchy, bald John Adams of the vice presidency. And they fixed it.”
Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his World War II book “An Army at Dawn,” has been working on his revolutionary trilogy for a decade and published the second volume, “The Fate of the Day,” this spring. Widely regarded as among the best living military historians, he was a featured commentator in Ken Burns’ “The American Revolution” documentary and has made numerous joint appearances with the filmmaker. He is currently working on the final book of his trilogy.
The author says that he was initially skeptical about the new project. With early memories of Superman comics, he wondered how any illustrator might adapt deeply-researched books that run longer than 500 pages. But the graphic format has been used on everything from “The Odyssey” to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. Atkinson changed his mind after Ten Speed Graphic, a Penguin Random House imprint, sent him several adaptations, including of the life of Frederick Douglass and Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny.”
“I saw that the comic books of my youth have evolved considerably and I was enthused about it,” Atkinson said. “They said, ‘We acknowledge this is serious history that you do. We don’t intend to dumb it down. Our ambition is to widen the audience, to pitch this story of the American founding to an audience that perhaps might be intimidated by a 560-page book.’”
